The Problem:
Travelers feel overwhelmed in planning their upcoming trip itineraries. They have too many resources to look through and don’t know which reviews they can trust.
The Solution:
A travel app that connects you with the trusted travel reviews of your friends. You can see their trip itineraries, look at their reviews, connect with their friends, and use their suggestions to help you decide your travel itinerary.
Role:
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Tools:
Adobe XD
Adobe Illustrator
Miro
User Research
User Persona
Our user research consisted of the creation of a proto-persona, six interviews (3 male, 3 female), and a survey of 29 people
In the interviews, a series of questions were created addressing what tools and resources users find most helpful while making travel plans, the degree to which people plan their daily itinerary and activities prior to traveling, what factors or circumstances create the highest amount of stress while traveling, and what decisions non-planners make when traveling.
In order to expand upon the answers received from our interviews, our team created a google form survey of 8 questions to understand traveling stressors, use and trust of reviews, travel style, as well as frequency of travel. A total of 29 people were surveyed over a period of a few days.We organized our findings into an affinity diagram in order to create our user persona and empathy map.
Empathy Map of our User Persona
Definition & Ideation
Problem Statement
We believe that creating a trusted and reliable source of information through reviews created by friends and family for travelers that seek exciting, adventurous and unique cultural experiences, will achieve less stress on part of the travelers and higher efficiency when planning their travel itinerary.
We will know this is true through reviews of our app, recommendation of our service and feedback from travelers who choose our app first as they begin their travel preparations.
Our brainstorming process began with an I Like, I Wish and What If exercise which was then sorted into a feature prioritization matrix to figure out what were the most important features to include in our app.
The ability to see where friends and family were traveling and add their trust reviews to the user's own travel itinerary became extremely important.
This lead to the app's tagline:
Create your own travel with trusted reviews.
Value Proposition Matrix
Prototyping
In order to start creating wireframes and prototype, a competitor analysis of two direct competitors: Trip Advisor and Visit a City, and two indirect competitors: Trip Advisor and Yelp. While each site did a great job with booking activities within the app, adding travel companions to itineraries, and adding linked travel details to itineraries, they were a bit confusing to use and didn't allow users to compare and contrast itineraries with other friends or users.
In the user flow that was created allowed an easy onboarding process, the opportunity for users to connect with facebook, twitter, google and their phone's own contact list. From the home page, users are able to explore new locations, connect with their friends/family travel plans and their trusted reviews, as well as start to create their own travel itineraries.
Original User Flow
Testing & Iterating
A total of 5 user tests were performed with 5 different tasks and scenarios. Overall the users were able to onboard successfully and add a new trip. The one difficulty was that about half of the testers had trouble adding an activity to a trip.
The main iterations were made after users have completed the onboarding process. They include:
• Home page becomes a news feed
• Profile has editable information within the page, instead of going to new locations
• Option to add activities to User Itinerary via Friends itineraries and explore search results.
• Added the option to add reviews and read reviews from buttons next to activities in trip itineraries
Testing Objectives:
1. Sign up for an account using social media account
2. Connect account with friends on social media or through phone contact list.
3. Add a trip to your account
4. Search for activities through the app and add them to their own trip itinerary
5. Add an activity to your own from a friend’s trip itinerary
Updated User Flow
Final Prototype and Final Thoughts
General: I have learned so much about the UX/UI process during this, my first, mobile case study app assignment. I really enjoy all aspects of UX - but especially user research and iOS prototype design
User Research: I have learned to listen to others and take their experiences in order to offer solutions. It’s so important to HEAR what others are saying in order to truly help. Having a better concept of what my group and I wanted to create would have been helpful in the first case, however, I was able to take that information to create an easy to use app to improve their travel experience.
Wireframing: I created my wireframes before I did my user flow, because I am a very visual person. In the future - I will try to do both at the same time.
Next Steps:
• Create an inbox/message system for friend to friend connection
• Create a way to specifically recommend certain activities to friends
• Create a “looking for recommendations” news feed
