Mobile Travel App
A one-stop shop for travellers to successfully and easily plan trips with their friends. Discovering local favourites to optimize their adventures.
Team:
PM - Julien Lin
PMM - Vicky Deng
BAs - Mahir Hamid, Jacob Xu
Sr/Jr. Devs - Emily Zhao, Khoa Nguyen, Reid Moffat, Olivia Xu, Kevin Liang
Tools:
Figma
Miro
Company:
Queen's Technology & Media Association (QTMA)
Problem Discovery
Planning trips with friends is difficult
Many of us recognized the difficulty in planning trips with our upcoming exchange terms and graduation trips. Having to coordinate travel plans with friends often take long hours and becomes a tedious process. Therefore, we wanted to understand the why to this problem and what we can do to enhance the overall trip planning experience.
Research & Problem Exploration
Identifying different pain points
This allowed us to understand the underlying difficulties that people experience when trip planning. Here we have identified the three main pain points people face.
A
Approximately 40% of our surveyors mentioned their biggest frustrations are aligning interest for activities, budget, dates between friends.
B
1:5 people expressed the difficulty planning the logistics.
C
1:5 people expressed the concern for inaccurate reviews and lack of updated information post COVID-19.
Understanding travel behaviours
Understanding trip planning behaviours helps us identify the important elements that help people trip plan most conveniently and accurately.
82% surveyors expressed the strong importance of being able to experience local businesses/activities when they travel.
76% surveyors stated they highly trust local expert suggestions or previous travellers.
Examining the opportunities among our competitors
Identifying key players in the industry helps us identify potential opportunities and learn from existing products. Implementing a UX that is proven to work for competitors can increase adoption rate for our app.
Analyzing key players' competitive strengths and design elements that travel/planning apps should include.
Word of mouth” is ranked the 2nd most popular method in discovering new places to travel to.
So what did we discover?
Readily available information isn’t always reliable for trip planning
The difficulty discovering local hotspots that have accurate ratings from locals limits the opportunity for more unique travel experiences
It is difficult to decide on itinerary that works for everyone
The most common stated obstacle to trip planning is being able to coordinate an itinerary that works for everyone
Travellers love local hotspots, but they are hard to discover
Over 75% of surveryors say that it is fairly important to be able to visit local businesses and activities when they travel
Target segments
Meet our travellers
From our surveys, we were able to categorize our customers into two main buckets based on overlapping pain points, needs and travel behaviours. We’ve identified our two main types of travellers we will be designing our solution for. Let’s get to know them a little better.
Refining the problem
The big question we are trying to solve...
Solution ideation
I created user journey to help me visually maps out the core processes that make up the app and how they flow. This was a great reference point to help me begin the design process and identify the gaps within the preliminary user journey I established.
A few important things to take note of:
With designing mobile apps, there is limited space to convey the same amount of information as a web page.
Mid-fidelity frames helps recognize missing screens that were not initially indicated in the user flow.
Being mindful of potential edge cases to ensure users will be able to navigate through the app smoothly and for developers working on the code.
Adding recommendations beyond the recommended list the app prompts users
Enhances customization for travellers.
Adding photos to reviews and exiting from the review feature
Provides opportunity to create more authentic reviews and will not gate travellers to provide a review.
Deleting past trips
Allows flexibility for users to remove data that they no longer need and save storage.
User Testing & Iterations
Three important bottlenecks we discovered
Redesigning the navigation bar
Initial icon in the navigation bar caused confusion among travellers. Thus we decided to explore various icon options and add text to enhance understandability.
Renaming categories for clarity of filters
The categories on the explore page were overlapping and lacked clarity. I conducted a card sorting exercise to figure the appropriate categories that were more effective and clear.
Ensuring accuracy of data input and review trust
People had concerns for the accuracy of reviews. We decided to instill GPS tracking and location data to determine the type of review given as well as the ability to upvote and downvote reviews.
One-stop shop to plan and consolidate your trips
Helps consolidate all your trips
Interactive swiping for activity selection
Swipe right if it’s right!
Detailed destination pages with all the information you need
Find everything and anything you need about the activity
Conclusion
My reflection
Working around different constraints
Our team was made up of students from first year to senior year. I needed to learn how to adjust my designs so they were feasible in terms of time and people’s abilities. Main constraints were time, skills and knowledge, and limited resources.
Incremental goals to achieve the bigger picture
Given the 6-month timeline and the goal to bring the idea from concept to delivery, we had to ensure we strategically broke down the steps. Having incremental goals helped up stay on track and not be overwhelmed by the scale of the project.
User testing helped discover overlooked bottlenecks
Through user testing and various research methodologies (surveys and card sorting exercise), we discovered areas of improvement. These bottlenecks were crucial in helping us achieve our design goals and ensuring a more seamless user experience.
Working with moving pieces
With a project that lasted 6-months, I needed to stay updated with the industry for any changes. For instance, Kayak had a redesign for its trip planning feature on their app. Thus, for lengthy projects, I learned to remain agile with my designs.
Next steps
Enabling Travellers to be able to be a local in more than one location for those who travel between cities
Adding an offline map to increase accessibility as travellers may not have data or Wi-Fi at all times when travelling in a foreign country
Improving the accessibility for the app altering the colours so they fulfill the guidelines for accessibility design
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