For an Amsterdamer, it really sucks to figure out by what time you should leave if you want to catch the next ferry across the IJ. I was asked to help out in the concept development of Pontual, a simple app that takes advantage of your GPS position and readily available online time tables in order to let you know when to start cycling to catch that elusive ferry.
A brainstorming session was organized with the developer to talk about the initial concept, discuss the intended user flows and to define the features expected from the app. After this, I created a series of wireframes to illustrate the main idea of the app and how the users would navigate through it. This allowed me to iterate on the design a couple of times, figuring out what worked well and what didn’t without having to go into too many visual details.
Once the interaction was final, we came up with a name (pont is the Dutch word for ferry) and I designed a logo for the app. This was the first step in creating a styling proposal inspired on water and transportation signage, and using the already familiar colours of the different ferry lines. I then applied this styling to all the screen mockups.
As a last step, I created a high-fidelity prototype of the app. The prototype runs natively on Android devices and allows a user to experience the general interaction they would have with the app, including animations and transitions. You can see a video of the prototype in action here, describing all the features of the app and illustrating how it works.