The Dérive app brings friends to the the same place at the same time, allowing them to experience different paths as they "drift" to the destination. One user creates an event, and the rest drift without knowing where it is they're going.
Phone Application
The user, Asaf, opens the application, and sees that there are currently no drifts happening. He then decides to create a new drift, so he clicks the "new drift" button.
Asaf is first prompted to select what kind of activity he wants to do with his friends. He then selects one category, in this case restaurants, and clicks next.
Asaf then decides the range in which to look for restaurants.
The restaurants in that range are then found, and Asaf can select one of these as the final destination.
Once the destination is picked, he chooses which friends to invite. Asaf is friends with some really cool people! He decides to invite Ringo, John, and Beyonce to drift.
Lastly, the earliest possible arrival time is calculated based on the criteria of all the invited friends, and he can choose a time for everyone to meet.
Asaf clicks done, and the drift begins! He can cancel the drift at any time, in which case his friends will be notified of the change. When his friends get close to the destination he will be notified on his smart watch.
Users have the ability to select what kind of transportation they're open to trying, and what they want to see on the way if possible. They also can choose whether they are "curious" to try new drifts at the moment, or "offline." Every user can select these settings, and when the earliest start time is calculated, all of these settings for each of Asaf's friends are considered in the calculation of the paths. Here we can see Asaf's personal settings. He is available for drifts, would like to see hill on the way, and is open to both biking or walking. If he is to use any transportation other than walking, he will be told to do so when he begins the drift.
Watch Application
Below we can see Beyonce's interaction with the watch throughout the drift. At first, if she is not currently in a drift, the application will be on standby for new invitations. Once Asaf creates the drift, she will get an invitation stating the drift start and arrival time, as well as be able to decline or accept the invitation. She will know the expected arrival time, which signifies how much time she has left along the way, rather than displaying it on the watch continuously. Once she accepts, the application will display the start time until that time is reached, at which point it will show the next step Beyonce must take throughout the drift. There is nothing that Beyonce needs to do or click, rather the step will just change once she has completed the previous step. Every time it changes, the watch vibrates so she knows to look at it for further instructions. In addition to showing each step, Beyonce will also be notified if she passes by any of the features she has selected and wants to see. These notifications will only last a few seconds, and the current step will be shown again. The interaction with the watch if very minimal besides these notification like screens, because the focus should be on the surroundings during the drift. Lastly, once she arrives at the destination, she will finally be told what it is.
What I learned
This assignment was a lot of fun, and I learned a good amount from it.
First, I have never used photoshop and illustrator, so I got a chance to see how they work and get basic understanding of what they provide.
Second, I learned how to use framer for prototyping. Framer is a great product, and allows the user to really feel as if he or she is using an application even before any of its functionality is implemented. While there is some javascript to write, it's very simple and intuitive.
Before understanding how framer works, I dove straight into using illustrator, so translating it into files that can be used by framer made the process more difficult than it needed to be. Rather than having all of the layers through photoshop and interacting with them directly, I had to create my own sets of layers within framer to make the functionality work.
Overall, I thought it was great to have an assignment where the focus was design. I got an opportunity to use different design principles from throughout the semester, and to try and design a nice and intuitive application.
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