Design Brief: "The London Guide"

The London Guide

Project Background:

The London Guide is an application that can be downloaded and installed into smart phones which familiarizes the user with the city of London. It is created for international students studying in London so they would know the city as easy as with the touch of a finger.

Since international students oftentimes do not have any support group or people that they do know when they come to London, they would find themselves having a hard time to adjust to the city and may even experience the probability of having culture shock. Though having a map and guides for different places and purposes do help, it is such a hassle carrying around a lot of folded paper all the time. Also, unfolding each one still has to be done, to pinpoint where to going, which train to take and then getting out a brochure to see the museums or coffee shops in that area. The student wouldn’t even have an idea if where he or she is going, is budget friendly. Add to that, it also presents the person to be susceptible to robbery because the maps would give off the idea that they are vulnerable, unfamiliar with the place and probably carrying cash.

This application would provide assistance, information and familiarization to international students all the while, which can be accessed conveniently.



Design Specifications:

The whole design interface of the application would have a minimalistic style and a sleek, modern and clean feel about it. Pictograms of the basic and necessary classifications would have the same style as well. This is to allow it to be user friendly and very understandable so that cultural biases would not affect the user to have problems. Basic shapes, clean lines and basic colours (ROYGBIV) will be used to depict the necessary information covered by the different categories in the application.



At the first page of the app, there is a home page consisting of different buttons for different categories (e.g. transportation, food, entertainment, shops, etc.). Then, as the user clicks on the button of their desired category a new set of sub categories will appear (e.g. TRANSPORTAION: train stations, bus stops, taxi stands etc.)




Different maps will be provided for the different categories and sub categories. The style in Henry Beck’s London Underground Map will be adapted all through out as a base design. For the other categories excluding transportation, as the user clicks on the shop/museum/café/restaurant that they want to visit, it will open pop up box with a thumbnail photo of that place and a few basic information. If the user wants to know more information, another clock would show the entire information about that place along with the website for it.



All information and photographs to be used in this application will be collaborated with the private and public owners and authorities to make everything as accurate and official as possible.