Overview

Designathon Theme

Design a digital interface that digitizes a tangible experience by accomplishing one of the following:

Option 1: Identify a physical experience that has not yet been effectively represented in digital form and develop a functional interface that replicates or enhances the core components of that experience in a digital environment.

Option 2: Identify an existing digital process that attempts to replicate a physical experience but fails to capture the personal, hand-on feeling that the original experience provides. Redesign the digital experience to recreate the qualities of the sensory and physical interactions and/or the sense of presence and emotional connection that people associate with the tangible version.

Process

Our Experience

As visual artists and designers, my friends and I have always loved the experience of junk journaling and scrapbooking, especially when it comes to documenting our travels. It’s a creative, meaningful way to slow down and reflect on the moments we’ve shared.

Over time, we found ourselves struggling with the cognitive overload that came with keeping it all together. We identified 3 main pain points to tackle:

Messy, hard to keep track of mementos which can lead of cognitive overload (ticket stubs, reciepts, doodles, etc.)

Requires various materials on site such as scissors, adhesives, papers, and stickers.

Often times a solitary experience and doesn't lend itself for open collaboration with friends.

Ideation

We brainstormed and used a multi-voting method in FigJam to identify a meaningful experience, and decided to digitize the collaborative scrapbooking experience.

Once we finalized the idea, we collaborated to brainstorm the app’s key functions, user flows, design aesthetic, and overall structure, ensuring each element supported a seamless and engaging user experience.

User Flow

Since our app has three main features, we split the work so each of us could design one flow during the hackathon. Early on, we agreed on a shared structure to keep everything consistent and easy to use. We focused on group travelers, making it simple to add content on the go and organize memories for easy collaboration later.

Working in parallel helped us move fast while staying aligned as a team.

Wireframes

We designed low-fidelity wireframes of the most important screens. From there, we decided which direction we wanted to go in and then we expanded the flows to highlight the app’s core functionality and how each feature would work.

Final Designs

Create Trips

Effortlessly plan trips, invite groupmates, and start documenting your shared travel experience.

Adding Mementos

The lockscreen widget allows users to directly open their phone’s camera or recorder and add mementos to their trip in real-time.

Or users can upload mementos later, so they can stay present in the moment.

Collaborative Scrapbooking

Pages for each location and day auto-populate with the mementos uploaded.

All trip members can collaboratively decorate and create a shared scrapbook that captures the spirit of their trip.

Bonus

In addition to our prototypes and presentation, we also submitted a video walkthrough that introduces our product and features our prototypes in action. Enjoy!

Reflection

Key Takeaways

First Designathon!

I wasn’t fully prepared for the stress of a 24-hour sprint. We struggled with time at first, but eventually picked up speed, worked more efficiently, and made fewer mistakes.

Aligning Design Aesthetics

We had different UI/UX approaches but overcame this by clearly setting clear goals and communicating openly from the start.

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THE GRIND NEVER STOPS!

We had to learn fast, build faster, and not let our momentum slip.
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Designathon Results

I’m excited to share that my team and I made it to the finals, placing in the Top 10 out of nearly 90 teams at CreateSC!

As finalists, we had the opportunity to present our product to a panel of judges, showcasing the work we developed during the 24-hour designathon.

*Some photos we took during the designathon!

Although we didn’t place in the top 3, the experience was still so rewarding. We had a great time and learned a lot along the way. Designing the scrapbook pages in the app felt like reliving those moments together, which perfectly aligned with the heart of our project’s goal.

Snippy