Next Up
Individual Work | 2021.02- 2021. 04
Application Design
Next up is an application generates trip plans and activities at random based on preset preference to create mysterious adventure and avoid decision making hassle
Problem
As an avid traveller, I've noticed how many my friends and I were having hassel with making up travel itinerary due to overwhelmed information, and hassel with different ideas.
Research
Prior to 12 weeks of trip:
3X
More experiences searches than hotel searches
8X
More experience searches than flight searches
Reasons for travel:
After booking:
95%
Keep visiting travel related sites
74%
Re-researched a trip
47%
Didn’t book online because doesn’t satisfy their needs
17%
Regularly think about trips they want to take
Online feedback about travel:
1. Planning and decision making in travelling is extremely exhausting and require a lot of energy to stick with it.
2. When travelling with a few others planing is a hassel because different opinions and needs lead to disagreements.
4. Even after decision, the extraneous information will overload people’s mood and be questionable to themselves if they have made the right plan.
3. Browsing all information and reviews on the internet eventually just jumbles in the brain creating more confusion in the process.
Design Question
How might we free users from browsing loads of travel information and avoid arguments encountered with different opinions. More importantly leverage the adventurous experience of travel to truly allow enjoyment of a place on the very brink of discovery and wonder?
Related Method Analysis
Different Types of Travel
There are many types of travel, including travel for relaxation; travel to visit; adventure travel; travel for specific task. Among these types of travel, travel for relaxation or leisure is the most dominant type. Therefore, my project targets in the direction of relaxation and leisure.
Methods
According to the most common way people travel, I analyzed their behaviors, highlights and pain points of each corresponding stages. According to the analysis, there is space for improvement in the planning stage and even problems occurring during travel can be avoided with a good plan.
User Research
My method of research is through generating an online Google survey to find the demands of users and their travel habits by getting statistics and informations they provide based on the questions I tailored. The gathering of informations help me to leverage my design strategy and to deepen my understanding of the pain points with travelling.
DATE: March 27th, 2021- April 2nd, 2021
POPULATION: 42 responses
Result
Participants are mainly around the age of 18-35 and a few up to the age of 65. Out of these participants, 70% of them travel 1-2 times per year and some even lower in frequency. The majority of participants travel with accompany, yet 20% of them like to travel alone.
How do they plan before travel:
How do they feel about travel:
Frequency of argument while travel:
Findings
1. Young adults cherish the opportunity to travel
Since young adults does not have a lot oftime, greater number of the population only travels 1-2 times per year or even less, thus they will treat every trip with great care.
2. Rough planning leads to unpleasantness
Most people will only do a rough planning before going to the local area. As a result, this leads to unpleasant mood with unexpected circumstances as shown by the research survey
3. Disagreement happens with diverse opinions
Different plans leads to argument, and the one who does all the planning often gets complained at. Moreover 1/5th of participants answered they do not want to travel with any others.
Interview
According to the characteristics of the users resulted the from questionnaire survey, I searched for 7 precise users with corresponding characteristics to conduct in-depth interviews
Q1: Who does travel planning? how? What are the difficulties?
Q2: What kind of purpose does the plan have during travel?
Q3: If you travel with companions, what are the unpleasant things have happened?
Q4: What does travel mean to you?
DATE: April 23th, 2021- April 26th, 2021
User Profile
Ideation
Randomization
The application gives randomness to a travel location and plan, which provides a sense of mystery and curiosity about the unknown. At the same time it will ensure safety.
Interactive with wide range data base
Need to provide users with complete and rich tourist information, not only tourist attractions, but also various routes and cultural exchange habits, etc.
Personalization with community building
Locations and activities are suitable according to each users’ preference from distiguishing their mood, physical status, and favourites to customize their individual experience.
According to the stimulus that young demographics like, the design attempts to create travel plans with the idea of openning blind-boxes, drawing cards, etc.
Certain events asks users to engage in a local ceremony or have a conversation with the residents depending on the sepecific culture dedicated to the location as if interacting with an NPC in real life.
Building online community to share the travel journey with feeds and recommendations based on preferences and correlations.
Idea sketch
Information Architecture
The functions of this application is divided into 3 categories. “Me” for personal information and setups ; “Community” hosting feeds from friends and recommendedation; lastly “Home”. where creation of trips and trip schedule takes place
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Interface Design
When signing up a new account, the application will ask and record personal information to accuratly position users’ needs
Profile and notification with new message
Calendar indicating dates of trip
Create a new trip
Upload images after they have finished an event
Start random rolling to determine the next stop
Invite friends to join trip
Allows users to browse others and friends’ posts related with travel.
Hosts functions as Journey, Wallet, Saved, Preferences and activity descriptions as well as friend’s messages
