Research
Snapshot
The Problem
Planning to visit a new city can be overwhelming, stressful, and time consuming. The traveler has spent hours researching and flagging places they want to go and now they are on a time crunch to fit it all in. After the trip is finished all plans and research are tossed aside and never to be looked at again. How might we simplify the experience of planning and reflecting on a trip?
The Solution
Use a human-centered design approach to create a product that promotes the natural sense of exploring by allowing travelers to plan, track, reflect on, and share their life's adventures.
My Role
As the sole UX designer on this project I was tasked with the entire design process from research to high fidelity prototype.
Users & Audience
Target demographic are users aged 18-65 who use smartphone apps regularly and enjoy traveling multiple times a year.
Research Process
Secondary Research
Travel Planning
Today’s digital world offers a wide range of platforms to aid with travel planning. From planning things to do, travel time, food and drinks to splitting bills, polling on places to visit, and much more. Planning is the most time consuming part of traveling to make sure travelers make the most of their trip. Whether that is planning for weeks at home or booking experiences on their mobile phone, everyone travels to enjoy the experience.
Travel Tracking
Most travelers use a map based application to track locations and figure out how to get from point A to point B. Travelers can use map based applications and websites to track distances, add new stops, and lay out a route. These applications paired with the many different GPS systems available make it is easy to track where people need to go during their travels. Some applications allows friends and family back home to track the traveler on their journey with either live updates or daily check-ins.
Travel Sharing
Aside from gaining personal experiences, travel often involves others. From traveling with friends or family to showing pictures of trips to others, people like to share their experiences. Technology today allows a traveler to collaborate with tripmates on attractions near their stay or route, make shared photo albums, send itineraries to loved ones, and show off their experiences on social media.
Competitive Analysis
Tripcast is a great application for privately sharing the users experience with only individuals they wish to see it. Users are able to use photos and text to share their story and individuals they share with are able to respond and react to their adventures in real time. Some areas for improvement are using the ability to search for locations, linking photos and notes with points of interest, and breaking a trip into consumable pieces. Google Maps is a powerhouse app that is a very good platform to use for navigating to multiple locations. Users have the ability to look up a point of interest and find details on the location, as well as public reviews and comments. Some areas for improvement are creating a better way to navigate to custom map section, the ability to share personal notes, and the ability to view multiple trips on a single map screen. The area identified for a product opportunity lies at the crossroads of a detailed personal travel log and the social connections shared over a mutual destination.
Primary Research
60 people were surveyed to uncover ideal candidates to interview and find out more about their travel and app using habits. The ideal candidate is someone who goes on over 4 trips a year and finds themselves in a new or unknown destination for over 7 days in a year.
During the survey a few notable findings were discovered. 45.9% of people will recommend 3 out of 4 trips that they take, 49.2% of people will share 3 out of 4 trips, and 19.5% of people will share on social media 3 out of 4 trips. A breakdown of the demographics in this survey is below.
Affinity Map
Five participants were interviewed from the pool of individuals surveyed. They were asked several questions about travel including: plan, track, share, recall, frequency, and feelings. After conducting interviews an affinity map was created to organize the data. The affinity map shows common issues, themes, and scope of the customer problems and needs. This process exposes patterns that can be seen through various data points.
Several themes emerged during this process, 4 key groups were formed from the data points: Carefully Planned Traveler, Spontaneous Explorer, Family Traveler, Wanna Be Jetsetter.
Empathy Map
To get a better understand the user’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. An empathy map is created to externalize knowledge about each type of user. These empathy maps will help to create a persona for the user types.
3 key user types were formed during this process. Some of the notes belonging to the “wanna be jetsetter” group from the affinity map could fit into other categories or were marked as not common enough to adapt into a target user.
Persona
These users types are transitioned into 3 personas taking into account the users personality, tech usage, goals, and frustrations.
Key Research Insights
Stress
Travelers feel stressed and overwhelmed when tasked with planning a trip to a new or unknown destination.
Photography
Photos are the most popular tool travelers use to recall trips.
Relief
Recommendations relieve some stress when a friend or family member can give advice on their positive experience.
Social
Travelers like to share their trips with friends and family, and recommend good experiences they have had.
Annual
Seasonal trips are a common form of travel.
Reflection
During the early stages of this project I did secondary research on the industry, current applications, and the steps a traveler goes through during the lifecycle of a trip. I found putting this type of detail and time into the research process allows for a more defined problem statement. Also, logging a lot of primary research (surveys, interviews, observation, ethnographic research) will be beneficial later on in the design process when you have a pool of individuals in your target demographic you can pull from.
The next phase of this project can be found in the “Information Architecture” section.