Travelers are often pressed for time while on vacation which makes it difficult to stay on schedule.
EXP TRVL
A Travel App Case Study
A travel startup had the goal to build a mobile app to help the modern traveler to plan their next trip.
Challenge:
Timeline:
4 weeks
Role:
Sole Product Designer
As product designer for this app, my goals were:
Conduct usability and competitive research to gain an understanding of the current travel market.
Create an experience that was straightforward and had relative ease guided through user research.
Synthesis the information into an app for the modern traveler.
The Solution:
Create an app that is able to book excursions and experiences and have them automatically sync to the calendar so the user can be reminded when to go to their next destination.
Research:
Immediately following this prompt, I had to come up with some ideas that I wanted to focus on with such a broad topic such as this. Through dialogue with my stakeholder I was able to come with a research plan.
The research questions I was looking to solve were:
How do users plan their trips and excursions?
How important is synchronization of planned events to the user’s calendar?
Who are our competitors in the space and what are the user’s experiences?
The Interviews
“I wish it was easier to see everything. Would like to see it all at once. [Such as] picking up the rental [car] during the vacation.”
I was able to get 7 people from a travel group to gain in-depth qualitative responses regarding my research plan.
When speaking to the participants I was surprised to learn that most of them would only book trips through their mobile device but also discover that most of the travel competitors didn’t automatically sync to their calendar which made it a hassle to try and remember or manually put it into the calendar.
Competitors
Most of the travel competitors didn’t automatically sync to their calendar.
Main Insight
Based on the feedback from my user interviews I found that trip itinerary calendar synchronization will relieve stress and enhance traveler's vacation experiences. I may be able to help if I build an app that automatically syncs excursions and trip details to the travelers’ calendar.
Users found it cumbersome to manually input their vacation plans onto their calendars.
Empathy Map and Feature Prioritization:
Reading through my notes from the user interviews, I took the most common pain points and gains to create an empathy map. The creation of the map helped bring the overall notes into perspective -
which led into making a Feature Prioritization Matrix that allowed for determining what needs would be focused on the design later.
Iteration and Prototype
Based on feedback that I received from others as well as my mentor, I iterated over the span of 2 weeks with 2 things in mind when creating.
A circular design in which book for a hotel or for an excursion feels the same all the way through for the user.
Giving the user more variation when it comes to how they receive the alerts on their phone in terms of frequency.
Lo-Fi Wireframe
Finished Product
User Onboarding
Booking a Hotel Stay
Booking an Experience
Thoughts & Takeaways:
What I Learned:
Focusing on the priorities that users want out of the app help, save time and really allowed me to hone in on those resources that were important
Planning a trip is stressful but also exciting. I went and had a discussion with my wife about future trips and how we can make them easier ourselves
Users are appreciative of the idea that the app gives them the option that they can sync to their calendar.
Next Moves: EXP TRVL 2.0
When coming up with the cards for options, people would press on the picture often instead of the book now button.So need to make sure that the images are also clickable and it doesn’t affect the like and notification button.
Expanding into flights and rental cars I feel would be ideal to make it into an all inclusive book later down the line.