A user-friendly application that helps users to pack their luggage for outdoor activities in an efficient, well-organized, and less frustrating way.
The idea for the product came about when Lily and I were frustrated at packing our luggage for camping. As people who love outdoor activities, we find it time-consuming to pack before going on a trip, especially activities like camping, mountain climbing, and scuba diving, which requires different necessary gear that we are not familiar with that much in our daily life.
We conducted a survey with 51 respondents to understand people’s packing experience broadly. We would like to understand when do people feel frustrated and what do they care the most during their packing process.
How to make sure that you don't forget to bring something important?
Will you categorize the items in your luggage?
will categorize items
Will you discuss with your travel partner when packing?
will discuss with travel partner
Will you double-check when you finish packing?
will double-check
How worried are you about not packing the necessary items in your luggage?
out of 5 average (5 is the most worried)
We also conducted 7 user interviews with respondents to dig deeper into their packing process and broke down our interview notes into atomic information on sticky notes in 7 colors representing 7 interviewees. We used affinity diagram mapping to synthesize our research findings.
Most people have a one-time list for packing, and they will rewrite the list next time.
Some people would share their packing list with their friend
They feel worried if they didn’t pack necessary things
They feel annoying when they spend too much time on packing
Most people double-check their package more than one time
When people double-check, they will do it with their list
1. Plan the trip
2. Create a list
3. Pack the luggage
4. Discuss with travel partner
4. Double-check
Spend a lot of time search for packing items
Worried to forget something need to be packed in the last minute. (ex: charging cable)
Feel exciting and happy in the beginning and at the end
Feel frustrated sometimes during the packing process
From the secondary research, analysis of the user interviews, I determined three major pain points that users faced:
How might we make the packing process for outdoor activities simple and clear?
How might we use an efficient and easy way to prevent users from forgetting to pack important stuff?
How might we provide a well-organized outdoor packing list and make the packing experience less stressful?
Focus on fulfilling users' needs and helping them packing their luggage efficiently.
Create delightful and engaging UX to increase the retention rate.
List checklist in a clear and simple to avoid information overload.
List the items in organized categories.
Categorize items into must and optional section.
A function to receive notifications for specific items.
A set of widget that allow users to see their list clearly on the home screen.
A function to add your own item into the list.
Setting a notification to remind an item before the date of the trip.
Highlight feature that allow users to emphasize an item when sharing the list.
Sending notification to remind the unchecked items before the date of the trip.
A double-check feature allow users to quickly go through the list and found the item that is unchecked.
Sharing function for providing the list to your travel partner.
Onboarding pages that introduce the key features of the product.
Design that can easily navigate the application.
Start using the app without creating an account or signing in.
We first put our paper sketch on FigJam to clarify user flow and main function of the app. Later, we designed the lo-fi wireframe for further user testing.
We used Maze to conduct 10 unmonitored user testing on our packing experience.
User Testing Key Findings
Is it easy to create a list?
out of 5 average
How important is the feature to send a notification of unchecked items before the trip?
out of 5 average
Is it helpful to share the list with your travel partner?
out of 5 average
Is it helpful to double-check the list before traveling?
out of 5 average
Other thoughts:
From the user testing, we found that it is not intuitive to turn on notification because users click the on/off directly before clicking the edit button.
💡 Solution: design the toggle switch that allow users to turn on notification in a more intuitive and easier way.
It is nice to have different method to delete the list and intuitive to delete the list by swiping left as a iPhone user.
It would be great if app can push notification before the date of the trip to invite users to double-check.
Create a list
A simple way to create a packing list for different outdoor activities.
Choose to view the category in grid view or list view.
Select a departure date and the app will sent notification about the unchecked items the day before that date.
Send notification
Set an alarm to an item if you want to receive notification about packing that item.
Receive the notification about the unchecked item the day before your departure day.
Long-press on the notification to mark the item as checked.
Share the list with friends
Highlight an item in the list by simply swiping left.
Share the list with your friends and remind them about the necessary item by highlighting.
Double-check the list
Quickly go through each item in the the list using the double-check function in the app.
Press the Checked button if you already packed the item.
Press the Hold button if you didn't packed the item yet.
Receive the notification about the unchecked item the day before your departure day.
I learned to improve my Figma skills with Grouping, Naming, Components, Variants, and Auto-layout when building the design system. By creating a design system, we can build our design more consistently. More importantly, when we want to change a part of the design that may affect the whole product, we can automatically change other identical objects and save a lot of effort and time.
At first, we put the highlight function in the edit page, but it turned out to be a bad design since it require more steps for users to highlight an item. After user testing, we designed the toggle button which allow users to complete the task in a more efficient and intuitive way. By getting feedbacks early in the design process, we can save time and efforts.
When collaborating with other designer, I learned to use low-fi prototypes and mockups instead of words description to communicate my design ideas. I found that prototype could work better than thousands of words.
I found that limiting discussion time allows us to focus more on the topics we should be discussing, maximizing meeting value and increasing productivity.
I also learned to manage my time and work more efficiently since I need to find the balance between my work/study and this side project.