Yes, we get it, there's a ton of Barcelona travel apps, but none like this one
The client
Barcelona Modernisme is an itinerary that takes you through the Barcelona of Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner and Puig i Cadafalch, the architects who, together with others, made Barcelona the world capital of Modernisme. This Route enables you to get to know thoroughly 75 works that Art Nouveau put down strong roots in Barcelona and today Modernisme is still an art that is alive and part of life in the city.
Modernism Architecture in Barcelona has been largely set aside by most of Barcelonians, overwhelmed by the tourist massification that the city has been suffering for 15 years. Tourists, on the other hand, are unaware that beyond the best-known works of Gaudí there is an open-air museum in the Eixample district. It is a paradoxical situation: the greatest artistic appeal of Barcelona is completely unknown for locals and tourists alike.
Services provided
- Digital consultancy
- Technical Architecture
- Graphic design (UI)
- User Experience design (UX)
- Programming
- Copyrighting
Design your own routes
Map's layout was determining to fix the look at feel of the entire app.
How to undertake the design of the app? Should it be simple and minimalist? Should it be bright or dark? Our option was to simplify the design and prioritize content over the continent. Thus we create a minimalist style in dark tones, where the clarity and color of the images stand out above all else.
All options in view
In the Home Screen the goal was to position all the tours available. There are couple of ways to do that: list, grid, carousel or map. Grid was our first option as we are working in a portrait mode. There’s not enough height to go with list mode as we would not be able to position all the tour information. Carousel mode is not the simplest as well as it usually shows one piece of information at a time before you swipe. Map, though it seems to us a great idea, might be too complicated for users to deal with at the very start.
Enjoy your walk
We wanted people to enjoy their walks and look around, our app just makes it a little more interesting. It was also important to keep stories quite short, so each point of interest can be consumed in just under 4 minutes.
About route's design, we decided not to go geographic or use walking distance criteria but to create thematic routes to hold all the points of interest. The objective with this approach was to make known all the POIs and allow the user to add them to their personal routes.
Routes thus are only invitations to know the work of an architect (Gaudi, Domenech i Montaner, Puig i Cadafalch), an area ("El Quadrat d'Or") or an off-the-beaten-track type of tourism ("Off the path"). The user can create their own route according to their interests and his times available.
Information modules
From a design and user experience perspective we make sure it’s optimized for using while viewing and walking.
There are couple of things we have done to achieve that. Larger typography and right line spacing helps a lot. Using different modules breaks text in a nice way. So if you look away from your phone and then look back it’s very easy to find visually where you left off, as story is broken into smaller visually different chunks.
Once again we have kept content over graphic design, just creating a minimalist style in dark tones, where brightness and colour of the images stands out above all else.
“When designing interactive experiences it’s quite important to think about animations and transitions. Transitions are essential to guide users where they are going to and where they came from”.
UX/UI DepartmentOpening the city to everyone
ResultsTravel apps in Barcelona are usually obsolete, boring or unhelpful. Or maybe what is worse: they have been made by people who have not even been to Barcelona, and you can see it. Our purpose has been to reinvent the travel app model with this Modernisme guide of Barcelona.
We have created an app for tourists who want to share experiences and feel themselves part of Barcelona. That is why we have spared no effort in offering useful tips that help you feel at home on your way through the city. Through a robust content management system is is possible to continue to add records in the future in order to expand the storytelling capabilities of the project.