TravelMind — Travel With A Peace Of Mind (UX Case Study)
Ever find yourself stressed before or during a trip? TravelMind provides all essential information at the palm of your hands. Follow me through my UX process in designing a “must-download” travel app.
Client Background
Trip Tribe, based in Washington DC, offers a community-based platform that enables travelers to connect with each other and travel together for yoga and fitness retreats. Their goal is to bring like-minded people together in the real world through travel.
Project Task
The Trip Tribe team is looking to find ways to add value and make travel easier for travelers. The team wants to develop a mobile application that will stand out as a go-to travel resource and a must-download for any trip.
To do so, I was challenged to conduct research locally and pitch a mobile application that speaks to a need and has a viable application in relation to travel. The product does not need to fall under the Trip Tribe brand and can be designed as a standalone product. Once complete, I would present my idea and interactive prototype to the CEO, Dave Aidekman.
Process
I had a little less than 2 weeks to complete the project and I embraced the Double Diamond design process to ensure that I meet the deadline while also maintaining a customer-centric approach in everything I do.
Discover Phase:
Mind Mapping
The topic of travel is very broad as there are many aspects to it. There are a multitude of different problems that travelers face that it would be impossible to address them all through the creation of a single app. In order to narrow the scope of the project, I created a mind map of the different segments of travel. I divided my map into 3 main sections: before, during, and after. This represented the different aspects of travel during different points of time of a trip.
After creating my mind map, I selected a topic from “Before Departure” and “After Trip”. I decided to learn more about how travelers plan for their trips in addition to how they document their experiences afterwards.
Interviews
I conducted 8 interviews with travelers who were currently staying at a hostel. The age range of the interviewees were between 24 and 40 years old. From my research, there were 4 takeaways:
- When planning for a trip, travelers say that the information is scattered. It is mostly all available on the internet but trying to peruse through everything is time consuming and some of the information is hard to find.
- Travelers want local tips regarding their destination.
3. Travelers are worried and stressed that they will make avoidable mistakes.
4. Travelers are content with how they document their trips, which is through photos and videos posted on their social media accounts.
Interview Analysis
I was beginning to see a theme with regards to pain points that my interviewees faced while traveling. When I asked them about how they plan for their trips, most of the interviewees told me that they are able to find most of the information they’re looking for, but it would take them a while to find it as the information is scattered all over the web. In addition, they would get this information from many different sources, which results in many tabs open on their internet browser and result in too much time spent on organizing the information on a planning document.
With regards to documenting trips, many of the interviewees take pictures and will upload them on social media. However, most of them did not express that this was an important part of their travel journey. They do it, but they’re relatively content with how they do it. Thus, I did not see a clear problem to solve with regards to preserving memories.
Affinity Mapping
After my research, I performed affinity mapping to organize my results and realized the need for a solution to make travel planning easier. I learned that travelers had more concern over how they planned for a trip than they did over how they document their trips. I created an empathy map with the results of my interviews to assist with understanding and visualizing the users’ needs in relation to planning for trips.
Define Phase:
Problem Statement:
Users need a resource that provides all of the essential information about a destination because it is time consuming to sort through multiple different sources of information.
Solution Statement:
TravelMind is an app that provides essential travel information for destinations around the world. In addition, travelers have the ability to share tips with others.
TravelMind will be less concerned about the “things to do” and “places to eat” when visiting a new destination. There are already numerous apps that fill this need. Instead, TravelMind will educate users on the “things to know” such as information about mannerisms, visa/entry/exit fees, safety, transit, etc. It will include information that travelers may not realize is necessary to know but are just as essential. In addition, there will be a social aspect of the app which allows users to share tips with others through their personal experiences.
Develop Phase:
User Flow, Wire Flow, and Prototyping
To begin designing for the app, I created a user flow for the first iteration of the app. This illustrates how a user would go through the app to find information about a specific destination and how they would access the ‘tips’ section of the app where they could either post a tip or search through tips. Next, I sketched out a wire flow based off of the user flow.
I converted my paper wire flows into a digital wire flow to get a better sense of how each screen would look before moving on the create the paper prototypes.
Feedback and Iteration
Once the paper prototypes were complete, I participated in a feedback and critique session with a group of 7 people. I received feedback that the app could be improved to be more user friendly. In addition, I learned that there were opportunities to add more value to the app. Thus, I implemented two additional features: Settings and My Documents which allows users to upload important travel documentation within the app.
Key takeaways and modifications to be made:
- Home page should emphasize what it’s meant for
‣ Search box for travel destination will be sized larger - Could the home page provide more value?
‣ Implement new feature: My Documents
‣ Implement new feature: Settings (Profile Settings, Report A Problem, Privacy Policy) - Keep thumb sizes in mind. Eliminate the possibility of users clicking on wrong icon.
‣ Make icon sizes bigger
‣ Add more spacing between icons - Ensure that all pages have consistency with navigation
‣ Users will have the ability to go back/cancel on all pages - Since there is a social aspect of the app, the “tips” section should feel more social.
‣ In the “Tips” section, the profile photo of each user will be shown next to each tip. This will give it a more “interactive” feel versus looking like static information. - Make sure all major features of the app are easily accessible.
‣ Users will be able to reach every major feature of the app within a click or two.
After the feedback session, I modified my paper prototypes to incorporate the suggestions I received to make the app more user friendly. In addition, I created user flows and wire flows for the two additional features (‘Settings’ and ‘My Documents’) to illustrate the process of how a user would navigate through them.
Deliver Phase:
I pitched my idea to the CEO of Trip Tribe, Dave Aidekman, using a slide deck and walkthrough of the clickable prototype I designed in Balsamiq.
The following features were included as a result of the research carried out in the Discovery Phase of the project and the feedback session conducted during the Develop Phase:
- Home page should emphasize what it’s meant for (search box for travel destination should be larger)
- Users are able to search for essential information by looking up the country or city of interest. Information is separated by categories for ease of access such as “Safety”, “Crime”, “Weather”, “Dining”, “Culture”, etc
- Users are able to favorite a destination and also bookmark useful tips
- Users are able to share tips with others for a specific destination and can also view tips left by others
- Users are able to add photos of travel documents within the app through taking a picture or through their camera roll.
The clickable prototype link can be accessed at: https://streamable.com/xpqae
An export of the screens (PDF) can be accessed at:
https://docdro.id/nxLXLY9
Next Steps
Although not directly related to design, if Trip Tribe were to move forward with the development of this app, users should have the ability to view their bookmarked tips offline. Not all travelers who want to use the app will have internet access at all times. Being able to view important information at all times will be a crucial benefit in having this app downloaded. Similar to how convenient Google has made it for users to use their Maps feature, the Travel Mind app should allow peace of mind on and offline.
If you’d like to discuss further about my project or would simply like to chat, you can reach me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/estherjmoh or e-mail me at estherjmoh@gmail.com.
