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A storytelling companion;
Turning your stories into timeless tales.
Context
As individuals, we travel and embark on trips to discover new destinations, experience diverse cultures, forge new connections, and most importantly, to create memories! When prompted to recount their cherished moments, many people (myself included) would often mention a travel adventure.
However, human memory falls short in retaining all the intricate details of a holiday. While some globetrotters rely on digital tools to document their journeys, others find joy in gathering collectibles from a trip. 


Pondering over the effectiveness of the above mentioned methods, led me to the following questions.
Roles
Design Research
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Mentor
Shawn Sprockett
Duration
6 weeks
1
How do we reflect and reminisce about our experiences from a trip?
2
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could relive the magic of travel whenever we want, not just in the moment?
3
How do we share our travel experiences with our loved ones?
Sojourn
Sojourn
Sojourn
Sojourn
1/4
Focused Problem Statement
The lack of a dedicated platform for tourists to preserve, share and relive their adventures and experiences.
A moment of revelation - discovering the wonder of travel journaling!
What is
travel journaling?
A travel journal is a personal artifact that allows you to record your adventures, feelings, and experiences during your travels.
It also increases your self-awareness, heightens your understanding and makes travel more rewarding.
It serves as a visual and/or written account of your adventures, providing you with a tangible keepsake (analog or digital) that you can cherish for years to come.
A travel journal serves as an archive where you not only document the details of your current trip but also all your past journeys into a cohesive and easily accessible repository.
The Solution
Creative
Storytelling
Travel
Documentation
Sojourn redefines the travel journaling experience, providing a unique and enriching platform for users who seek a genuine and introspective way to capture and reflect on their journeys.
It diverges from traditional social media by emphasizing individual storytelling without any external validation. It offers a private and secure reflection space, fostering introspective travel journaling.
The Archetypes
Sojourn targets travel enthusiasts who are looking for efficient and creative ways to document their holidays.
Lore Collector
Journaling enthusiasts who love to document not only their extensive travel experiences but also the myriad instances of their daily life.
Memory Mappers
Avid travelers who love gathering mementos from each of their trips, and enjoy sharing exciting stories and pictures with their friends and family.
User Journeys
In order to identify the archetypes' pain points, their course of emotions, and areas for improvement, I mapped out their journey. The stages from planning for a trip until traveling back home were analysed.
Key Insights : User Pain Points
Disorganized travel mementos, and a risk of physical journal damage or loss.
Sharing experiences is challenging as current trends prioritize sharing visuals for validation, not storytelling.
Creating a travel journal can be time-consuming and may lead to procrastination.
Difficulty in personalizing travel documentation, hindrance of creating visually appealing narratives of their journeys.
Memories fading over time if artifacts collected are not rediscovered.
Lack of privacy & security
in traditional journalling.
Market Study
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the digital tools utilized for journaling, benchmarking was conducted with seven applications.
No single application identified was exclusively designed for travel journaling.
Among the seven applications assessed, I found that four were developed for users to create visual journals. Additionally, two applications tailored for travel were primarily used for recording visited locations, with journaling being of secondary importance.
Information Architecture
Before moving into creating the screens, the information architecture was devised to enhance the overall organization and structure of the app.
Concept to Canvas...
The design direction was conceptualized with the understanding that the app's focal point would be the visuals contributed by users.
Detailed Solution
Craft your stories
with journal layouts
Elevate your travel stories with Sojourn’s built-in feature, offering a range of templates to effortlessly transform your adventures into visually appealing journals.
The feature also allows you to personalize the templates based on your narratives.
Tell Tales
with Prompts
Elevate your travel tales with curated prompts to spark creativity and guide you in crafting vivid narratives and unforgettable stories.
Ignite your storytelling journey and effortlessly transform your adventures into captivating written expressions.
Explore our
Journalling Tools
Sojourn provides users with versatile tools to craft their personalized journals.
Unleash your creativity, add multimedia elements, and design unique layouts to turn your adventures into a truly one-of-a-kind travel journal.
Mark your
Dream Trips
Sojourn enables you to curate a personalized list of dream destinations, and the specific places you want to visit within those destinations.
You can also seamlessly track your journey by marking visited locations, creating a visual map of your travel memories.
Style Guide / Typography
Gambetta
General Sans
RANGE : 10 styles
USE CASES : Headers / Sub Headers.
The elegant serif typeface can be used as eye-catching headers, and sub-headers with appropriate letter spacing.
APPROPRIATENESS : This font has been previously used for Books, Magazines, Text, Newspapers; Making it a good choice for an application for journaling.
HISTORY : It was created by Paul Troppmar for the Indian Type Foundry in 2021.
FLEXIBILITY : 135 languages
UNIQUENESS : Gambetta’s letterforms are drawn with diagonal stress, and have a lot of visual contrast in strokes which causes it to stand out as a stylistic font.
RANGE : 12 styles
USE CASES : Body Text / CTA
With the correct letter spacing, leading, and weight selection, the typeface can be used for body text as well as CTAs.
APPROPRIATENESS : The clean typeface has good legibility and can be used as body text in websites, branding, editorial designs.
HISTORY : It was created by Norwegian type designer Frode Helland for the Indian Type Foundry in 2021.
FLEXIBILITY : 135 languages
UNIQUENESS : This mono-linear geometric typeface is orderly, yet has stylistic elements.
Style Guide / Color
The palette used is an analogous color scheme. The color scheme is earthy, and has tones of sage green, brown, and off white.
I made the choice of having a subtle and less saturated color palette was so that the UI colors don’t clash with the journals of the users but, compliment them instead.
# EEECDF
# FDFCF5
# FFEE6
# BAB49F
# 526849
# 422C19
# 725134
# 7C987B
# 21170F
Style Guide / Icons
The iconography set consisted of clean and minimal monolinear icons. I chose this style to visually compliment the look and feel of the app's user interface design.
There were instances where customization of icons was necessary, hence, modifications were made keeping in mind user's ease of interpretation.
Learnings &
Reflections!
After completing each project, I consistently reflect on my strengths and areas for improvement. This particular project reinforced the significance of iterative processes and the value of continuous feedback in elevating the design. The iterative approach also contributed to refining UX flows and the app navigation.
Additionally, a significant takeaway was the importance of selecting appropriate, visually appealing photographs that harmonize with the application's UI.
Research
Moodboard
Prototyping
Research
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