Spek - Hotel Review App

Overview

During my final year of the Informatics degree at UC Irvine, I worked with a team of six students to design and implement an outside company’s project - a hotel review app called Spek, by MV Systems. MV Systems consisted of two entrepreneurs who were not tech-focused, but had a strong idea backed by expertise in the travel industry.

We started by designing the main flow of the app - a user leaving a review. We wanted the experience to be easy but detailed. After user interviews and surveys, we landed on a set of six categories, each with a set of unique ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ questions. This detailed, granular review process is part of what differentiates the app.

I took the lead on frontend development, designing and implementing the UI such as cards for the review categories, creating navigation flows, and setting up data to be handed off to the backend Firebase store.

Features

• Geolocation and mapping of hotels using HotelBeds API
• Upload multiple images per review category
• Review and read other reviews for each hotel

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges we faced was navigating a project that was not clear-cut. While MV Systems had a great vision, they needed our technical expertise and design skills in order to actually make it a reality. This meant a lot of brainstorming sessions as well as user interviews/surveys to really nail down what we wanted the app to be.

Another challenge was using React Native - I have experience in React and Swift, so React Native was a familiar experience but challenging nonetheless. I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn the framework as it’s something I’ll want to keep using in the future.