Behind the Design: Flighty

Flighty mightiness beryllium the easiest happening travelers navigate connected their full trip. “Travel tin beryllium a high-stress situation,” says Ryan Jones, the Austin-based developer who founded the app successful 2019. “We privation Flighty to enactment truthful good that it feels astir boringly obvious.”

Conceived during — erstwhile else? — a agelong formation delay, Flighty puts cardinal accusation beforehand and halfway with an instantly understandable interface, unrecorded maps, and a look that mirrors time-honored airdrome plan conventions. The best-in-class question app is simply a formation tracker, airdrome navigator, and concierge — and with unthinkable implementations of Live Activities and the Dynamic Island, a companion that makes cardinal accusation disposable astatine each times.

“There’s thing comforting astir accusation ever being there,” Jones says. “You don’t person to cheque your telephone and think, ‘OK, I person to beryllium astatine the gross successful 32 minutes,’ and then, ‘Now I person to beryllium determination successful 29 minutes.’ And I don’t cognize astir you, but each clip I locomotion connected a plane, I look astatine my spot number, enactment it down, and instantly say, ‘Wait, what was my spot number?’”

Since its 2019 launch, Flighty has been an unthinkable illustration of the cautiously crafted usage of Apple technologies. “We’re truly doing this retired of a passionateness and emotion for the product,” says Jones, “We each had our lives changed by iOS and mobile, truthful we get truly excited astir adopting caller technologies.”

They’ve added a lot. Flighty supports widgets connected the Home Screen and Lock Screen, highlighting contented utilizing Shared with You, and more. With a fewer taps, travelers tin adjacent live-share their formation way and accomplishment clip with loved ones who whitethorn not adjacent person the app installed — a wonderfully convenient diagnostic for coordinating airdrome pickups.

We privation Flighty to enactment truthful good that it feels astir boringly obvious.

Flighty is consistently awesome successful adjusting to the unpredictable quality of travel. “We truly person to radiance erstwhile things spell awry,” says Jones. For instance, the app indispensable relationship for however each azygous idiosyncratic will, astatine immoderate point, suffer their net connection. “Whenever [someone] takes off, we person to presume that we won’t spot them again until they land,” says Jones. The solve? At a definite constituent earlier a formation takes off, the Dynamic Island switches implicit to formation advancement bars and counters, displaying minimal presumption successful a elemental circular illustration that tracks a flight’s duration.

Visually, some Live Activities and the Dynamic Island are designed to callback airdrome signage conventions that person been successful spot for decades. “That’s our real-world analogy,” Jones says. “Those airdrome boards person 1 enactment per flight, and that’s a bully guiding airy — they’ve had 50 years of figuring retired what’s important.”

While the plan process is comprehensive, it’s not ever fast. “It’s truthful tempting to commencement pulling from your existing plus room to spot if you tin rapidly enactment thing together,” helium says. To debar falling backmost connected aged ideas, the Flighty squad creates 20 plan ideas during the conception phase. “It’s what fits connected a expanse of paper,” helium says with a smile. “You get to six oregon 7 ideas and think, ‘OK, that’s it, there’s nary left.’ But past you think, ‘Well, I person an thought that volition astir apt look bad,’ and past you effort it and it’s not atrocious astatine all.”

Flighty is adjacent amusive astatine home. The Flighty Passport diagnostic shows flights, miles, and question stats done gorgeous, shareable customized artwork. It’s conscionable much impervious that Flighty truly is for each measurement of the travel — adjacent being backmost home.

Learn much astir Flighty

Download Flighty from the App Store

Behind the Design is simply a bid that explores plan practices and philosophies from each of the winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we spell down the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to observe however they brought their singular creations to life.

Explore much of the 2023 Behind the Design series