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ROLE
Product Designer
UX Researcher
TEAM
Individual
EXPLORA - Travel Planning App
Travel has always been a huge part of my life. This motivated me to create a Travel application that allows users to plan their memorable trips effectively, by providing useful information or suggesting itineraries to destinations all over the world.
PROBLEM
People nowadays mostly look towards ease of access. Manual planning of holidays is harder and takes a lot of time. Many travelers rely on their mobile phones to plan their entire itineraries when they are on the go. Users typically find themselves overwhelmed and confused while planning a trip.
Often, we find ourselves in a situation where we find it difficult to plan a trip to a new destination. Let it be determining the travel time and distance or choosing a budget stay & it is very difficult to manage your budget and trip costs, especially when travelling with a group.
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we minimize the user’s research process that goes behind planning a trip?
SOLUTION
Explora also helps users manage time, attractions, budget & expenses during the journey, provides personalized offers, and it is also a community-sharing travel experiences so that people no longer have to rely on travel agents, guidebooks, and compasses for travelling.
PROCESS
Ok, but how did I actually get there?
USER RESEARCH
Interviews revealed 3 pain points that travellers were facing.
To gain a deeper understanding of user needs and pain points. I interviewed several people to validate the concept of such an application. Through a synthesis, I was able to extract travellers' three main pain points that they were facing while travelling.
Information is scattered
An average person goes through 38 different travel sources from over 7 websites and compiling information takes a lot of time.
Spends a lot of time Researching
& Planning
Travelers spend copious amounts of time researching to find unique experiences, often only found browsing through travel blogs or recommendations
Unable to share experiences & recommendations with friends and family
Travelers love writing and sharing about their travel experiences, most often through Instagram or through their travel blogs. It's also how they find recommendations.
and also revealed areas of excitement that I could capitalize on to create an end-to-end travel experience.
Loves meeting new travellers while traveling
Travellers love how many other travellers they meet and become friends with while travelling.
Likes to share experiences and recommendations
Travelers enjoy writing about and sharing their travel experiences, most often on Instagram or on their travel blogs. This is also how they obtain recommendations.
Trusts recommendations from previous travelers
Recommendations from previous travelers are highly valued. Travelers are more likely to visit a place if it was personally recommended vs found online.
QUOTES FROM THE PARTICIPANTS
“ It was time-consuming because
I had to copy and paste information from every website that my friends sent me.”
“My itinerary took a lot of time and effort to plan, but we ended up using Google Maps instead.”
DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES
How could I translate these pain points into design opportunities?
Information is scattered
How might we offer users one stop solution where they can find all the details when planning a trip and also minimize the user's research process?
Planning an itinerary takes a lot of time.
How can we make itinerary planning easier and less time consuming for travellers?​
Unable to share experiences & recommendations with friends and family
How might we make it easier for travellers to share their experiences with others?
Overall, people expressed a desire for a product that would help them to plan their journey effectively. I was able to further define and analyze the issues that the users were facing and how my app can potentially help solve them.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Existing products addressed some of the pain points, but no one product did it all.
Many products have tried to capitalize on the growth rate of the travel industry and changing travel behaviours of travellers. I reviewed other products that offer a booking/planning experience to better understand the expectations users may have and what solutions can be offered. During the research, I identified a few products that offer similar features.
Meet other travelers
Discover unique experiences
Plan your own experience
Share travel experiences
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USER PERSONA
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USER FLOW
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OPPORTUNITY #1
How might we minimize the user's research process & offer a one-stop solution for travellers?
An average person goes through 38 different travel sources from over 7 websites and compiling info also takes a lot of time.
Explora is a one-stop solution for users where they can find all the necessary information about the trip. It also helps users manage time, attractions, budget & expenses during the journey, provides personalized offers, and it is also a community-sharing travel experiences.
It minimizes the user's research process outside of the app through a user-friendly and intuitive interface that makes planning a trip a simple process.
OPPORTUNITY #2
How can we make itinerary planning easier & less time-consuming for travellers?
Planning an itinerary takes up to 7–14 days on average which was very time consuming.
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Users feel overwhelmed and confused by research and an inefficient itinerary that had no context.
Explora offers users the ability to create their own travel plans. It also enables users to easily and effectively plan their itinerary in order to travel to their desired destinations.
OPPORTUNITY #3
How can we make it easier for travellers to share their experiences with others?
Recommendations from previous travellers are highly valued.
Travellers are more likely to visit a location if it was personally recommended to them rather than found online. Explora allows users to share experiences & recommendations with friends and family.
Travellers enjoy writing and sharing their experiences on social media, most often on Instagram or through their travel blogs, so that other travellers can benefit from their first-hand knowledge; it is also how they find recommendations.
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PRODUCT STRATEGY
At this point, I had a product that addressed user pain points. But, How could it be monetized? How could it grow?
MONETIZATION STRATEGY
Explora could include sponsored recommendations while still maintaining user trust by being transparent.
The Explora team could do paid collaborations with places and personally recommend the experience ONLY after experiencing it themselves and truly believing that other travellers would enjoy it too. While they are sponsored recommendations, I want there to be as much transparency as possible so that user trust is not affected.
GROWTH STRATEGY
Explora could integrate with popular social media apps to encourage users to share their plans with their network
Knowing how important sharing their travel experiences on social media is for travellers, I wanted to leverage that behaviour to promote user growth. Posting their plans on social media would be both a way to share what they're up to while travelling as well as potentially find travellers in their social media network that might want to tag along.
PROTOTYPE
TESTING + IMPROVEMENTS
Addition of Chatbot feature:
It automatically collects all the information about the user and their interests in the application and based on the data, conducts a dialogue with the user and solves the necessary issues. Chatbot also has a list of automatic questions that help speed up the process of solving a problem.
Addition of Saved Feature:
Users can save all of the interesting offers, places, hotels, cafes, and other things for later use.
REFLECTIONS + WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFRENTLY
This project helped me to work on myself and my skills. It taught me to have patience & consistency and helped me improve my problem-solving and visual design skills.
I learned that usability testing is the most important step because it allowed me to determine what users found useful and what they didn’t.
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