We designed FLOAT to simplify travel.
For challenge four, we were tasked with finding an application and improving its user experience. We chose to work with flight apps. There was a problem: we couldn’t even find an app that does everything we think a flight app should do. FLOAT builds missing, essential features into the travel app. FLOAT guides your experience in the airport with places to eat and shop, parking information, and a terminal map. It syncs with airport alerts about weather or security delays. It can even parse your email so all you have to do is hit “forward,” and it knows where you’re going, and when.
We developed FLOAT from our app makeover challenge. The original app, Flight Aware, bombards you with information, but doesn’t visually prioritize the information you need to know when you’re in transit. How could we use an app where the expected arrival time requires you to do arithmetic, but the wind speed was prominently listed? Our initial updates focused on improving the “glance factor” of the app for by highlighting the most relevant information. With FLOAT, we took this a step further. We did a full redesign. We stripped away irrelevant data. We removed cluttered visuals. We designed graphics that conveyed information, rather than distract from it. FLOAT distills information down to the essential.
