Travel Cast
Travel Cast is a trip-planning tool that encourages collaborative planning. It allows travelers to share the trip, suggest things to do, and collectively vote on the best activities. Whether it’s a solo or a group trip, this app alleviates the stress of planning, ensuring every traveler's experience is smooth.
Duration
4 months
Role
End to End UX/UI Designer
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Optimal Workshop
The Challenge
Traveling has become a norm in today’s society, whether it’s for leisure, work, or out of necessity. Planning trips can be stressful and may require multiple tools. Whether it be a solo or group trip, spending extra time researching and planning trips can be a hassle. A streamlined process in an all-in-one product can save travelers from the stress of planning.
The Solution
To identify the main stressors of the trip-planning process, I interviewed five frequent travelers. The objectives of these interviews were to understand the steps users take when planning a trip, how travelers feel when planning for a trip, how long it takes for travelers to plan, and to determine what services travelers use when planning a trip. I used these key insights to develop a tool that addressed the needs of travelers.
User Interviews
Research
To gain deeper insights into the planning behaviors and emotions of frequent travelers, user interviews were conducted to help understand their planning methods and processes. I interviewed 5 people ages 26 to 31 years old who are frequent travelers. From the interviews, I organized each of the interviewee’s insights on an Affinity Map, based on similarity. This structured approach led to the identification of overarching themes such as Planning, Feelings and Motivations, offering a comprehensive understanding of trip-planning experiences.
Key Insights
Trips are planned around a budget. The user’s budget helps determine many aspects of the planning process, such as prioritizing places they want to visit or dine at, where they should stay, and how long their trip should be.
Information on the destination is important in the planning process. Factors like weather, distance between places/walkability, visa requirements, vaccination requirements, and COVID guidelines affect how users plan and prepare for their trip.
Group trips are challenging because travelers often compromise their interests, or their traveling styles are very different.
Reviews are very important in deciding which destinations to explore, restaurants to dine at, and accommodations to stay in. It also influences the prioritization of must-visit locations, allowing users to optimize their time.
How might we help travelers on group trips plan an itinerary collaboratively to cater to everyone’s interests?
I’d like to explore ways to help travelers on group trips plan their itineraries collaboratively because it can be frustrating for travelers to compromise their interests, when all parties of the group contribute their own time and money.
I created a User Persona that resonated with the interviewees to provide a more focused target audience.
Storyboard
How can we help Anya?
Brainstorming
Make the itinerary sharable.
Everyone can suggest places for the itinerary.
Have a voting system to see which places are preferred/majority vote.
Can be anonymous, or not.
Have a filter system for price, types of attractions, ratings, etc.
Send out notifications to people added to the group trip.
Have a calendar/event planning tool to set a time for the group to plan virtually.
Partner with Zoom or other video chat tool that allows virtual meetings.
Set dates for when the voting system on attractions/places end; to be able to settle on decisions.
Task Flows
I created three primary task flows to assist Anya in accomplishing her goals.
Adding a Suggestion to the List of Places
Voting by Invitation
Manually Create and Edit an Itinerary
Style Guide
When using my product, I want the users to feel calm and my product to evoke feelings of reliability, wanderlust, and collaboration.
Colors
The color palette for Travel Cast draws its inspiration from nature. The primary blues evoke a sense of calmness and trustworthiness, while the earthy beige secondary colors embody a safe and warm atmosphere.
Development
Mid-Fi Wireframes
Once I developed the 3 main tasks, I laid out mid-fidelity wireframes for the main proponents of the product, which consisted of the Invite screens, Adding Suggestions Screens, and the Voting Screens.
Hi-Fi Wireframes
As I began to develop the mid-fidelity wireframes, I pivoted my main focus to three main tasks that were unique and essential to Travel Cast. Travel Cast features the ability to add suggestions and vote. For these two features, I had to create 3 different tasks: adding suggestions, creating voting sessions, and voting.
Usability Testing
Goals
Determine whether the tasks flows can be completed successfully.
Determine improvements that can be made.
Gain insight from participants on what area were confusing or difficult to use.
To see what they enjoyed about the product so far.
Participants
Five young adults who are frequent travelers.
Feedback & Implementation
During usability testing, participants found the screens fairly easy to use, with the add button easily located for completing tasks. However, feedback highlighted the need for improvements in certain areas. For instance, the location pin on the map required an aesthetic adjustment as it was initially overlooked by a couple of participants. The all-black pin was replaced with a beige one outlined in black to enhance visibility. For task 2, setting the voting duration date seemed confusing for some participants, who mistook it for scheduling the activity date instead. To address this, clearer instructions were implemented. For task 3, potential changes include replacing checkboxes with clickable cards, incorporating customer reviews into the info panel, and displaying the overall voting results. I replaced the checkboxes with clickable cards for easier mobile usability, and I implemented customer reviews as a couple of participants stated that their decisions relied heavily on reviews.
Final High-Fidelity Wireframes & Prototype
Click on each image view the prototype.
Adding Suggestions Screen
Create Voting Screens
Voting Screens
Conclusion
This project proved to me just how iterative the UX design process is. In the ideation and brainstorming phase, I had several ideas on how to solve the challenges the user faces. However, I had to remind myself that prioritization is key, and I had to deliver an MVP that would address the key pain points mentioned in the user interviews.
The next step in this project would be to add the Itinerary Creation feature where the users can build their itinerary based on the voting results. This feature would complete the all-in-one trip planning tool that was intended for this project.