Since the audience for this app is college-age art students who love visiting museums, I identified the branding tone as friendly, energy, happy, and artistic, allowing the design to look and feel both modern and familiar. Because of this, I decided to use line elements and a red, blue and yellow color palette which match the De Stijl style.

According to the study, booking a suitable hotel can be difficult for an art student with a limited budget, therefore youth hostels became their first choice. But what kind of roommate will they have? I noticed many of my classmates had similar problems when they traveled abroad. I began interviewing them and created a user survey to collect information and data points about their needs, fears, and factors that influence their decisions.

Based on the survey respondents and after identifying my potential users, I interviewed ten art students from Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University to understand their accommodation experiences. I started by asking how they would find the room they like, how much they would spend, etc. I felt it was necessary to create personas to get a better understanding of the target user and how each could benefit from the app in different ways.

I initially drew my prototypes on paper to visually experiment with the information I collected during user testing. Based on this testing, the early designs changed and developed quickly in this low-risk environment. I began the ideation process of wire-framing and sketching out the main screens. My goal was to provide a structure and design that would meet the needs of users while keeping the objectives of the app design.