Vail

MY ROLE: UI/UX Designer

My responsibilities for this project included wire-frame & user flow design,

visual design, interaction design, and prototyping.

Mobile application design

The vision for this application was to provide a simple yet intuitive design for the user to navigate through the process of planning a trip to Vail Mountain Resort in Vail, Colorado. The process included reserving a place to stay, buying lift tickets, booking ski lessons, renting equipment, and finally prearranging transportation. My goal was to design an app to lessen the strain of planning and try to make it an enjoyable experience, so the user could look forward to their trip.

Another intention was to create an application that was an extension from the desktop experience. Knowing that people are using their smart phones more and more to shop, book trips, make reservations, etc., the experience needed to be accessible on many platforms. In fact, mobile internent usage surpassed desktop usage, 51.2% vs 48.7%, for the first time in October of 2016. Also, consider this statistic: there will be 20 billion mobile devices by 2020 (The Economist), and roughly 2 million apps are now on iTunes and Google Play. Those are just a couple of reasons to get in the app game.

App Icon Design

Even though Vail Mountain Resort already had an established and recognizable brand logo, I decided to proceed through my routine of sketching icons, and then mock up digital graphic versions of those sketches to arrive at the final app icon. I always like to give myself, as well as the client, options and variations.

Initial App Sketches

The initial app sketches helped me plan out the user flow in addition to realize certain obstacles and find solutions to overcome them. These sketches can always bridge a gap in app design process by providing insight and clarity to the original ideas. As always, this is an essential part of design.

User Flow - Lodging

High-Fidelity Prototype

After drawing sketches of the user flow and screens, instead of wireframing low-fidelity mockups, I decided to go ahead and create a high-fidelity prototype. This interactive prototype was created with Proto.io, an online prototyping tool. The prototype can be viewed here.