February 2025
Service Design
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ROVE was the product of my first project at Georgia Tech: a mobile application that aims to ease the stress of packing for trips. This was the first project of the course so we were applying foundational concepts previously learned in class including: the design thinking process, conducting qualitative user research, and basic prototyping. The project prompt specified that we would create a product from ideation to completion and that’s what happened!
It was June 2021 and class was happening virtually; finding research participants is always a difficult task (I now know this) and this project was no exception. I recruited a few friends and family to be my users and conducted two rounds of user interviews. Round one focused on demographic data, other digital products, and asking about behavior regarding travel. Round two focused solely on travel and asking more specific questions about planning, budget, convenience, preference, etc.
Among the key findings, it became clear that packing was a common pain point among users. Specifically, users noted really struggling to pack for multiple destinations or for new climates. For example, one user noted packing for what she described as “western weather” only to arrive and there not be any humidity, this making the “real feel” temperature very different than what she packed for.
Pain point: packing.
Since this was a class project, inevitably part of the process included practice with creating a variety of deliverables. I created a user persona and journey map, competitor analysis, user flow (practice with a good onboarding experience), and feature prioritization matrix.
After ideation and producing some quick paper sketches, I started wireframing in Figma. Upon wireframing and connecting some screens together, I made a key heuristic change: a universal menu across all screens.
A quick round of usability testing also pointed out some flaws to improve upon with the high-fidelity version. Users liked the navigation (this was especially gratifying). Among noting that this was a low-fidelity version, users noted that the home screen didn’t feel like the home screen - something that I would change moving forward.
After analyzing competitors and conducting a moodboarding session, I created the style guide for ROVE:
Upon applying the style guide to the iterated wireframes, I conducted another task-specific round of usability testing. Users would complete the onboarding process, navigate to the “new trip” dashboard, and add items to a packing list. Users completed all tasks with a 100% success rate. I received some other feedback about recurring navigation elements (confusing) among other general comments.
This was my first solo design project with a bit more formal training. Despite creating a feature prioritization matrix, I still had a difficult time with maintaining scope creep: things kept popping up unexpectedly that needed addressing. The three-week time period also felt super short for this project; I would have, of course, benefited from having more time to conduct additional research, especially regarding more specific packing behavior.
Given the time frame I had, I came up with a product idea that could feasibly exist (I got a fair amount of praise for it). I also got feedback that I did a good job with branding/identity. This project was a great opportunity for practicing the UX research process (informal) in particular - countless rounds of interviews and usability tests was valuable practice. I got some great feedback from my peers; one person in particular noted that this app would be a fantastic natural pairing to rising wardrobe inventory applications - users could import their closet into ROVE for super accurate planning.
