Briefing
Visit Antwerp challenged us to convince more young urban travellers (18-36) to choose Antwerp for a multi-day city trip. This audience avoids traditional city marketing, has little trust in official institutions, and looks for authentic, less obvious experiences. The concept had to be digital-first, feel authentic and combine a digital application with a physical activation and/or social media campaign.
My role
Team project with four people. I worked on UX research, visual design and branding, marketing materials and motion, and front-end styling (CSS).
Process
Research & concept
We started with street interviews with 21 young travellers and found that they trust people, not ads: recommendations from friends, locals and people they meet. They also remember cities through moments rather than landmarks. Using personas, the Nerd/Noob framework and the customer journey, this led to MemoMe: an interactive map of Antwerp full of memory pins left by locals and visitors. Users can explore by theme, save spots, collect stickers around the city and leave their own memory behind.
Design
The biggest challenge was finding a style that followed Visit Antwerp's brand guidelines but still felt right for a young audience that's quick to spot anything too polished or promotional. We researched what our target audience likes and explored different visual directions before settling on one. The design started with the microsite and grew into the full app design and all the marketing materials, such as stickers, posters and social media content.
Development
The web app had a lot of features, so building all of them took a lot of time. My focus was the styling. Along the way, we worked through the interactive map, security and plenty of bugs and side effects that came with a project of this size.
Result
