Topdeck Travel mobile app

The ask

The new app aims to provide Topdeck customers with an engaging in-trip experience, offering key information related to their trip and building excitement for the next step of their adventure. It also allows customers to settle their balance pre-departure.

The scope of the project was to deliver an app in time for the 2024 peak travel season, which meant that we needed to mobilise rapidly and focus on an MVP delivery.
 

The approach

Discovery

Discovery focused on defining the app experience through collaborative workshops and competitive analysis. The outputs of these activities generated the app map and overall content structure, which formed the foundation for the initial app lo-fi prototype.

Design

Moving into the design phase, we needed to ensure that users felt a cohesive experience using the app and the Drupal website, but also ensure that the app reflected the unique Topdeck brand and felt distinct. Atomic design principles guided our approach, allowing us to create a flexible design system that would work beyond MVP delivery. From the initial design concepts through to the final high fidelity prototype, close collaboration with both the Topdeck project team and the app development team was crucial for successful delivery.

Development highlights 

• Built using Flutter (our open-source framework of choice)
• Complex notification system, based on the departure date of the trips booked - for example, notifying customers when new information is available within the app
• Preventing customers from accessing the full app when payments were outstanding for an upcoming trip
• Integration with the Drupal website APIs to allow content such as trip itineraries to be kept up to date in real time
• Integration with several third party APIs such as Hero and Qualtrics
• Implementation of Azure Single Sign On across the Drupal website and mobile app to allow users to have a much smoother experience navigating between the two
• Customers able to update their personal information within the app

The results

Central to the success of this project has been the longstanding partnership between Topdeck and Zoocha, allowing us to be open, agile and pragmatic at each stage of delivery in order to achieve the end goal.

The launch of the Topdeck app has also been met with industry acclaim through publication in travel media, detailing the highlights and functionality of the user experience. 

Experience the app here.