Circles App Design
My friend Emma and I created Circles, an app allowing people to interact with one another in a single space, where all memories from a trip can be stored at the touch of a fingertip. We had 40 hours to design a travel-sharing app for the Adobe x Airbnb Creative Jam using a program that was new to us at the time, Adobe XD.
We ended up placing fifth in an international design competition with over 360 teams!
Project Description
Empower families and groups of friends who travel together a collaborative way to document, organize, and share their travel experiences and stays to the larger Airbnb community. In a mobile app, provide a way to combine photos and/notes and transform their shared family trips into immersive stories about the culture and destinations they visit.
Our Goals
We wanted to create a platform that would allow people of all ages to document their travel experiences in one unified area with the people they care about most. Given the audience of Airbnb, and assuming similar users, we wanted to focus on a clean and simple user interface to make the app accessible to all, while also using branding assets from Airbnb.
Things to Consider
Audience
Does the app address the target audience and their needs?
Innovation
Does the prototype solve the problem in an innovative way?
Intuition
Is the user experience and interface intuitive?
Design
Is visual design used in a thoughtful and meaningful way?
Ideation
The purpose of the app is to allow people to create “groups” from their vacations and share their memories with others. We wanted members to be able to upload images, videos, links, notes, and even link their Airbnb stays and experiences directly into the app. Our goal was to allow people to view trips and get inspiration from public groups in a safe and minimally invasive way.
We began by deciding what our main screens and navigation bar should include, and found ways to incorporate Airbnb branding elements. Because we were designing a new app, we chose to create a new identity with a distinctive purple that is both approachable and legible.
Next, we had the important decision of naming our app. We decided to call our vacation groups “circles” rather than “groups” in an attempt to make our app more unique. Once our app was close to being finished, we landed on the name “Circles.”
Branding Guidelines
Final App Design
Feel free to walk through the app yourself!
The prototype can be found at: https://xd.adobe.com/view/1985ef3b-7f9d-4a31-7e40-683941eff542-6fb4/?fullscreen
Here is a clip of me presenting Circles to the Airbnb and Adobe judges.