Completed: may 2023

Travado

The Problem

Planning travel with others is expensive, overwhelming and time-consuming.

After identifying our collective passion for travel, this problem space was chosen for a university group project for Human Computer Interaction.

Together we carried out background research on our demographic, developed a survey, conducted interviews, and observed potential users to determine the best understanding of our users. We performed a competitor analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of existing solutions and determine opportunities for improvement. From there we synthesised our findings we defined key objectives and investigated trends and new technological innovations to help ideate solutions. After this, we documented our ideal user journeys through flow diagrams before beginning low, medium and high fidelity prototypes.

The Demographic

A demographic of young adults, aged 18 - 28 was chosen due to:

• The general interest in travelling (most popular age range)
  
• Technology proficiency and comfortable online
  
• Access

We identified key needs such as:

• Exciting new opportunities
• Modern and appealing user-interface design choices
• Methods for sharing options with friends

Surveys of our target audience

Here are a few of the responses received from our survey.

User Interviews

Here are a few of the responses received from interviews:

"I would like to be able to save trips or itineraries"

"I avoid travelling because budgeting is hard and unpredictable, I worry I will run out of money”

"I want to travel more! But it's too expensive" "I would love to travel more but I don't know where to start, the whole planning process is overwhelming"

"I get worried about trusting travel companies when booking, it's easy to fall into a tourist trap.

(on Trip Advisor) "

I appreciate the feature, which allows me to save destinations and share them with friends or people I'm travelling with by collaborating through a shared link." "Easy booking process and accurate information"

(on MakeMyTrip)

"I value discounted prices but would prefer if the app allowed me to input my budget to plan my itinerary accordingly."

"There is way too much information on every screen, and it makes me feel very overwhelmed - I don't know where to start. The poor UX/UI choices make it feel less reputable and I don't feel as though I could trust it "

"There's a lot there, I don't know how to navigate everything"

Competitor Analysis - Summarised

Defining our Objectives

The general objective is to develop a travel app that meets the users' needs and overcomes the limitations of existing systems. Our findings from survey data, interview responses, internet research and analysis have framed the following objectives we have identified for our system:

1. Budgeting and financially friendly options

2. Planning Assistance/Customisation

3. Easy discoverability

4. Usability (easy to use)

5. Credibility (trustworthy)

6. Social Features

Ideation

I began by drawing mind maps to ideate possible solutions for each pain point or objective.

I then created a rough outline of the main features of our app and what each of them would include. (below) This was used to communicate my ideas to the team before sketching the low fidelity prototypes. (right)

Ideation

After team discussions I created diagrams to demonstrate the user-flow.

Low - Medium Fidelity Prototypes

Another team member created the next two prototypes of our app for the home and item pages. We reflected as a group, tested with users and interviewed others regarding the design.

Home Page

Add new trip: This is the a primary feature and is prominent when user's open the app. It allows users to create a new trip or scroll to view previous trips.

Explore: Provides quick links for easy searching and shows the capabilities of the platform to new users

Nearby options: Helps users find things to do nearby

Wishlist links: Allows users to view saved items (users can create folders and share wishlists with others)

Deals: Users can view unique deals from partnerships made with other companies

Explore/Search page

Search bar: This opens to allow users to type in places, activities, food places and more. Users are prompted with popular filter options such as 'popular destinations, or recent searches.

Advanced Search: Allows users to more effectively search for items that match their unique preferences

Recent searches: Helps users reopen past searches

Personalised recommendations: Users are provided with personalised recommendations based on location (e.g. nearby), interests (e.g. food), or general popular options

Search results: A list of options is provided, based on the user's filters

Trips Pages

Ongoing/past/wishlist: Users can use the toggles to see different trips

Create a new trip: Users put in their destination and timeframe and create a trip from scratch or a generate an itinerary

Trip from scratch: Users are supplied with a template to fill in with different activities to build an itinerary

Generated Itinerary: Users are asked to provide more details and receive an full, editable itinerary based on their personal preferences

Trip planning: Users can edit their trips at any time, generate a new option or receive more information. Users are also informed whether the items are verified or require a booking.

Other pages

Search result pages: A few examples of the pages for when users search for a country (e.g. Japan) or city (e.g. Kyoto)

Item page: Each place, experience, food vendor or attraction will have a page with the average review and price, opening hours, an image gallery, keywords, more info, an address, map and directions, other info and similar options.

Inbox page: Here, users can communicate with friends and make group chats for each trip. Users will be able to share things like tickets and details with others via a group wallet

Profile page: A typical profile page for users to provide their preferences when using the app

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