Wonderpath

A UX concept for urban exploration

Have you ever been to a place you didn't know with time to kill and nothing to do? Or even in your own city with an empty afternoon. The purpose of this app is to create an adventure curated based on your interests.

Project Parameters

This solo project was a personal interest because I have moved to a new city several times alone and wished for a way to get out and see some of the local things. It also allows the user to create a "crawl" just like a bar crawl where a person goes from bar to bar, a user could create a crawl based on any interest. Want to try a bunch of local ice creams, take an ice cream crawl!

The goal was to create a simple flow that accomplishes the goal of allowing a user to explore an urban area wihtout needing to do a lot of research beforehand.

Wireframes and Sketches

This project started with notes and research and a rough idea of how the flow would work. There were also ideas and notes for community sourcing information. As the concept progressed, some of these features fell to the side as secondary if or when the basics of the main app were completed.

Final Concept

The app begins with a splash screen and a login screen. The user is then brought to a home page where they can immediately begin a new adventure or select another option.

The home page allows the user to see the most recent adventure they went on, or select one of the buttons on the bottom of the screen:

  • Suggest a location - this allows users to submit places they’ve found, such as street art or pop up restaurants or achitecture and historical points of interest

  • Google Pins - This syncs with a user’s google maps pins to help guide what the user might like to visit

  • Saved Lists - the user can save their interest lists so that it is fast and easy to start a new adventure with the same interests

  • Favorites - Places that were found on past adventures that the user liked

When the user starts a new adventure, they are first asked a short series of (mostly) optional questions in order to help the app determine a few factors.

Mode of transportation helps the app to decide how far appart each stop might be. The end location allows a user to end close to the place they need to be next, while time available, max distance, and minimum/maximum stops allows the user to control when the adventure ends.

After setting the parameters for their adventure, the user is asked to select some things they would be interested in seeing or doing on their adventure.

Once the user has selected these, the app asks if they want to start with a particular stop or be surprised. This allows the user to make some decisions about when they go to certain things, such as a food based destination.

Final Thoughts

I feel that this app would be a really interesting thing to actually use while on vacation or in a city that you’re only spending a few hours in. I think there are some pain points in setting up interest lists and asking too many things from the user up front, but they could be massaged out.

I would also want to add the ability to explore popular adventures or see what kinds of adventures your friends might have been on recently. Potentially even add the ability to review places within the app so that the app can learn from what you did and did not like about various locations.