Overview
Travelist is a travel app to create Itineraries for adventurous trips and lets you save and share them with friends. This was my first capstone project from Phase 1 of DesignLab.
Background
Planning is the phase most people struggle with as they don’t have a one-stop-shop. We aim to discover a tool/feature that can make travel planning easy, fun and fulfilling experience, rather than an inevitable task.
Problem
Planning is the phase most people struggle with as they don’t have a one-stop-shop. We aim to discover a tool/feature that can make travel planning easy, fun and fulfilling experience, rather than an inevitable task.
Research
Research Goal
We want to know the challenges people face while trip planning that increases the time and makes it a cumbersome task. Understand the pain points so that we can decide what planning tools or features we may incorporate to make a useful platform for users to plan their trips.
Research Methodologies
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Surveys to understand how often people go for travel, and what would help them save more on their budget or time. Also, other quantitative data such as demographic information (age, marital status, etc)
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User interviews to get deeper and more clear understanding of the challenges people face while trip planning, the thought process about the whole process and what would add value to the existing process.
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Competitive analysis to see what tools or services competitor websites are offering
Survey
Prepared a survey questionnaire form to understand how often people go for travel, and what would help them save more on their budget or time.
Competitive Analysis
For the competitive analysis I compared the key features of the leading apps and the user problems they tried to resolve.
User Interviews
I conducted user interviews with 5 participants to understand the pain points of people when they are planning to travel and try to find a solution for their frustrations.
The participant's age range was 27 - 64.
Affinity Map
There were a lot of new and valuable insights at every point especially after the User Interviews.
Users have many problems, but the points I really liked to explore would be to make a platform for “Non-Vacation” trips like trekking, hiking, bike rides, etc.
HMW
We want to know the challenges people face while trip planning that increases the time and makes it a cumbersome task. Understand the pain points so that we can decide what planning tools or features we may incorporate to make a useful platform for users to plan their trips.
POV
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Surveys to understand how often people go for travel, and what would help them save more on their budget or time. Also, other quantitative data such as demographic information (age, marital status, etc)
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User interviews to get a deeper and more clear understanding of the challenges people face while trip planning, the thought process about the whole process and what would add value to the existing process.
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Competitive analysis to see what tools or services competitor websites are offering
Ideate
UI Kit
Created a UI kit for that suits the brand values for my app - Collaboration, passion, adventerous, safety, travel responsibiliy.
User Flow
Created the user flows for creating an adventure trip itinereary and sharing it with friends.
Task Flow
Created 2 task flows
1. Build an Itinerary for Adventure Trip and Leisure Trips
2. Saved and Share Itinerary
Low-Fidelity Wireframe
The app design ideation started with designing the screens on paper. These were the basis of moving forward with the design of the app. Tried to cover all the content that seemed necessary.
Digitizing Wireframe
The app design ideation started with designing the screens on paper. These were the basis of moving forward with the design of the app. Tried to cover all the content that seemed necessary.
Prototype
High-Fidelity Wireframe
Applied the colors and the UI kit to the mid-fidelity wireframes for Travelist App. I optimized only for mobile screens.
Usability Testing
After the prototype was ready, it was time for usability testing - testing with some users and understand if the app was user-friendly and easy navigation.
Participants
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5 participants in total
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All the testing was done in person.
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The average time taken for the test was 20 minutes.
Task Flow
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Create an Adventure trip itinerary
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Create account and share with friends
Goal
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User is able to create the adventure itinerary successfully without help. for an Adventure Trip
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Measure time taken to complete task.
Usability Testing Affinity Map
As per the feedback received from the testing, I created the Affinity Map to track what Worked, the ideas, changes required and the questions asked.
Usability Test Findings
All of the users liked the visuals of the app and were able to share it with their friends. Below are the negative feedbacks and their fixes:
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Most users got confused while creating itineraries.
Fix: Added more logical steps to make it a smooth, easy and intuitive experience. Added notification screens as well to give assurance to the user. -
No Add button or drag option to add a place to the itinerary.
Fix: Added drag option to add places in itinerary and made the plus buttons actionable. -
Maintain visual layout.
Fix: Changed the image cards and removed the scroll arrows to maintain the same visual design and components in all the pages.
Iterations
Fixed the issues in the app discovered during the usability testing. Fixed the visuals and added:
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extra screens with a blank itinerary to start adding items to the itinerary
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error notification - when someone adds extra activity for the day and misses entering the dates and place for the itinerary
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more information screens
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search and expand options while creating the itinerary
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Final Product
Implemented all the changes on the app and the final product was a good success in creating the itinerary for an adventure trip.
Conclusion
The whole experience of doing research, creating the app and then watching people use it in front of me was a very satisfying feeling. During the process of designing the product, I realised the importance of research.
In the end, I learned to not get too attached to the design and be open to doing the iterations as the design is always for the people to use. The biggest learning in the whole process was that a single app cannot cater to the needs of all the users and it's not possible to have all the features in a single product.