Team:
Madelyn Lee - UX/UI Design
Ricky Liao - Fullstack Development
Carl Searle - Front-End Development
My Role:
UX/UI Designer
Duration:
~24 Hours
Background
BuckIt is an AI-driven mobile app that generates unique itinerary plans for users based on their responses to the question “What’s on your bucket list?”.
My primary role was to help ideate, design, and prototype the app. I was able to evolve the idea from a simple AI response app into a developed itinerary planner.
Ideation
Problem Statement: Bucket lists don’t come to fruition because people don’t know how to execute their plans.
With the recent emergence of AI and Natural Language Processing, we saw the potential to integrate this technology into a mobile app. Since NWHacks is an open-ended event without track topics, we decided to pursue the product of a journey planner that utilizes AI to generate specifically tailored itineraries.
AI has unlimited possibilities, and I had trouble identifying a specific use case for this app at first.
What type of information is the AI going to be generating?
The user inputs a location for their “bucket list”, and AI responds with full itineraries for activities in the specified area.
The user inputs an activity for their “bucket list”, and AI responds with possible locations and itineraries for the activity.
After struggling to find a use case for either of these scenarios, we decided to combine the two ideas by developing the AI system to understand specific filters.
Although the app is primarily based around travel & adventure, I wanted to account for other “bucket list” use case scenarios as well.
Research
First, we conducted research on our product’s possible competitors.
At the time, there were no other similar apps that utilized AI to generate itineraries, but from a quick search, we learned that there were many travel apps that had highly detailed planning functions. Examples of these include TripAdvisor and Wanderlog.
We realized that our product would not trump existing itinerary apps' fidelity, so we searched for a strong use case for an AI system.
As a young adult, my daily app usage consists of many that have fun or social aspects in them. Many of the existing itinerary apps fell short of incorporating a random, fun aspect to their product. From this, we knew that our product would have a possibility to target a niche of being a useful planning app while maintaining an entertainment aspect. Since the AI would provide unique responses each time, users can enjoy the “randomness” of the itinerary planning, and actually utilize the plan after.
Target User: “I have things on my bucket list, but I don’t know how to plan or execute them.”.
We created our target user and began designing to follow a travel use case scenario.
Design Process
Being a hackathon project, we jumped straight into designing & prototyping to ensure that our developers could immediately code the front end.
I ideated the product’s branding & aesthetic to feel modern and minimalistic.
Red/orange gradient
Sans-serif font.
Soft and rounded vectors.
Before wireframing, we made sure to finalize an idea of the main screens.
Profile page to view in-progress and completed bucket list activities
“What’s on your bucket list” questionnaire that includes a text entry and filters.
Journey map visualization with an itemized list.
We then began designing the foundational screens in our app.
After planning the screens out, we made iterations to the design and flow.
A lot of iteration was needed on the user flow of the app.
Some of these include:
Including a navigation bar for only two screens.
Creating a timeline card that complements the journey map visualization.
Deciding on how detailed our itinerary would be.
Debating on the number of filters the response could include.
The most difficult portion was incorporating the filters section within the questionnaire screen. Since we utilized Chat-GPT3, the AI required a detailed filters section to ensure that the itinerary would be perfectly personalized for the user.
Reflection
Although navigating the flow of an AI-driven app was difficult, the end result was a polished product that incorporates entertainment and practicality into one app.
Being my second hackathon, I was able to design a much more polished product than my first project at DubHacks. This idea required much more ideation and iteration though, so it heavily impacted the amount of progress we were able to make as a team. Our developers were not able to finish coding the front end because we took a long time to finalize and create the user flow & design.
What could we improve on?
Combining the journey map visualization and itemized itinerary into one screen instead of two.
Expanding on the profile section to include social networking.
Creating more screens, the two-button navigation bar was slightly offputting to utilize.
What’s next?
Make the app include a friends feature to allow for social networking and for others to view bucket lists.
Matching our itinerary planning fidelity to the level of existing apps.