Recount is a travel-tracking/journaling app that allows you to collaborate with friends to document your travels. Incorporate information like text, photos, audio, videos, music, and health and fitness data to create a multidimensional memory.
I love traveling, and I love journaling about my travels. I have been trying to find an app that allows me to track and journal about my trips. However, most travel-logging apps are simply trackers to mark off places I’ve been, whereas some only incorporates limited text-input functions.
We need a good digital travel journal
Target user: Traveler + Journaler
After studying the audience of other travel-logging apps, I identified my target user as some who travels + journals. To learn more about my target audience, I interviewed 3 people who frequently travels and had the habit of keeping a journal.
I then conducted surveys targeting a broader audience to generally learn about people’s travel habits.
Sample interview questions
How do you document your travels? Tell me about your most recent trip to another city/country. If you can only remember one thing from that trip, what is it you remember?
Sample survey questions
Do you have the habit of keeping a journal/diary? Do you travel alone or with friends and family? Rank these hypothetical travel scenarios based on memorability
“I used Polarsteps for a while. The animations were cool but it was very much limited to pictures and locations. I wish I could add my playlist my friends and I created on there."
Mabel, illustrator
Jenny, Biologist
“I have all these photos I want to share with my friends and I have to do it through either Google Photo or text, both are super inconvenient.”
“The most memorable experience was when we celebrated my friend's birthday in this restaurant in Spain.”
Steve, Student
How often do you take picture with your phone?
Often
Not often
Do you travel alone or with others?
With others
Alone
Which one of these scenarios is the most memorable?
Visit to a local movie theater to see a new film
Outing with friends to restaurant
Attending a local sports event to support your team
Evening stroll at a nearby park
For the next step, I conducted a competitive analysis using the SWOT method. I analyzed three of the most popular travel-tracking apps on IOS: Polarstep, Been, and Visited. All of these apps lack the ability to allows users to journal their journey.
SWOT analysis
According to my research, people travel usually travel with friends and family rather than along. Traveling is a social activity, but there are no social/collaborative travel-logging apps on the market. Furthermore, most apps only functions as a travel-tracker with no journaling function.
Solution: What if there is a collaborative travel-logging + journaling app?
Digging Deeper
I then generated a persona from my research to represent the main user type. Say hi to Emma!
I then brainstormed several scenario in which Emma would use Recount in her daily life. This helped me further understand the importance of the social aspect of Recount, which is what I chose to focus on in the rest of this project.
Ideation & Brainstorming
Now the premise of creating a collaborative travel-logging app was set, I decided to frame one specific problem to solve since this is a one-person project with limited time. I decided to use How Might We? question to brainstorm and further narrow down one exact problem I wish to solve.
After brainstorming, I pinpoint one precise problem to solve: How might we facilitate and encourage collaboration between friends to create stories?
Afterwards, I went back to my competitive analysis and summarized what the others travel-logging apps failed to accomplish. From the downsides of the other apps, I synthesized 4 functions that combines travel-logging + journaling:
Collaboration
Location/Map
Journaling
Multimedia
I identified two workflows to best showcase the features of Recount: add a new story & search. I then created a user flow map to maps the steps users take to add a new story or search for a story.
Designing: Sketches & Wireframes
While sketching, I came up with the idea to use a color-coding system in addition to their profile picture to differentiate between users while they are collaborating on the same story.
Design system
Prototype & Final Design
1. Storyline
This is your homepage, where all of your stories are displayed. This what you first see when you open Recount.
1. Storyline
This is your homepage, where all of your stories are displayed. This what you first see when you open Recount.
2. Add new story
When you add a new story, you are first shown the suggested stories. These are stories templates created by Recount based on the pictures the you took and locations you’ve been to.
2. Add new story
When you add a new story, you are first shown the suggested stories. These are stories templates created by Recount based on the pictures the you took and locations you’ve been to.
3. Invite friends to co-write the same story
Invited friends to co-write to the same story. Your friends’ contribution will be color coded. Once they have accepted your invite, you can edit the story together.
3. Invite friends to co-write the same story
Invited friends to co-write to the same story. Your friends’ contribution will be color coded. Once they have accepted your invite, you can edit the story together.
4. Co-writing together
Add images, video, voice recording, location, text, playlist, and songs to a story. Recreate your travel memory with your friends.
4. Co-writing together
Add images, video, voice recording, location, text, playlist, and songs to a story. Recreate your travel memory with your friends.
5. Search for a story
Search for a story in your storyline through the search button. You can look up stories via location, time, co-writers, or title.
5. Search for a story
Search for a story in your storyline through the search button. You can look up stories via location, time, co-writers, or title.
6. Revisiting your story
Search is one way of revisiting your stories. Revisit your story and share them with your friends!
6. Revisiting your story
Search is one way of revisiting your stories. Revisit your story and share them with your friends!
Next step & What I’ve learned
The next step for this project would be to conduct testing to see how the the users react to the design and implement iterations as needed.
This is the graduation projects for my undergrad degree at Northeastern University, it was an individual project with limited time. Because I have never completed an individual project of such scale, I had some trouble in the beginning with planning and time frame. I was able to overcome the problem when I realized I overestimated the amount of time I needed to conduct research, and changed the project timeline accordingly to stay on track.
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