WRLDLY | Travel App

In this case study, you will see that travel is something most people strive to do some day. This app is designed to make planning travel simple, easy, and efficient. Using a single source to find recommended trips and put together an itinerary for either pre-planned or recommended trips.

PROTOTYPE

The Problem I Suspect is

That making travel plans is too time consuming, between having to use different websites for each aspect of the trip to making sure the itinerary is planned out in an efficient manner, while leaving choices for spontaneous travel plan additions.

This is a travel app for people who work full-time or don't have the time to go through numerous websites to plan a trip or get a recommended trip. The user user can easily keep track of their plans for up to 10 trips—scheduled for the future—at a time and keeps track of the users tickets or reservations, plans and given ideas for stops on their trip.

Competitive Analysis

TRIP CASE: is an app where the user can plan a trip by either manually adding activities to their itinerary or adding plans through emails confirmation emails from reservations to "trips@tripcase.com" where they will automatically update to the app.

STRENGTHS: Automatically forwarding emails to this app. Also have active trips, past trips, and trips that a user can follow to get inspired.

WEAKNESSES: Forces the user to log in the first time the user opens the app. Hamburger menu that doesn't make sense. The inbox is from what the user forwarded from their email confirmations. The look of the app is old fashion and not exciting to look at. Difficult to understand the different items (reasons-needs) and the alarm looking icon is activities which doesn't make sense.

TRAVELZOO: is an app for people looking for deals on travel, going out to eat, hotels and flights. The app goes into details about what the trip deals include and gives the user the option to book or favorite the trips through the app.

STRENGTHS: Easy to navigate the app with large descriptors and imagery. Pricing, destination and duration for trips is clearly displayed on vacation deals before entering the deal. Can look at booked trips, past trips and favorited trips easily in the bottom navigation.

WEAKNESSES: Doesn't keep an itinerary of all the stops offered and expected on the trip. Some of the vacations navigate outside the app that could confuse the user. No way to add additional activities to the plans in down time. Unsure what is in the bottom navigation with the lines in the box were at first, receipt? list?

Personas

Planning Patricia loves to plan trips but works full time and doesn't have a lot of time to plan the trip. She loves to travel internationally but finds the process of planning to be too stressful. There are too many apps to choose from to plan her trip. This is causing unnecessary stress in her life and preventing her from making the final details of her plans solidified. When making her plans for her trip, she has to open multiple websites and apps at the same time to make sure the itinerary makes sense. Another problem is, is that she has never been to these places and not only doesn't speak the language but doesn't understand the distances between the locations.

Most of her planning revolve around recommendations from friends and imagery she has seen online. She doesn't know where anything is located based on distance or direction, or what the hours of operation are for these places. Also making sure she keeps her tickets easily available on her phone.

Profile:

Age: 28-32 years old

Location: New York, NY

Profession: Copy Writer

Former Travels: Germany, Canada, Greece & Italy

NEEDS:

MORE TIME SPEnt with friends than at work

less time spent planning trips

recommendations for activities to do on her trip

Behaviors:

Works 40-50 hours a week

Likes to go out with friends to new restaurants and bars

Enjoys new adventures

Makes the plans for traveling

pain points:

too many applications for making an itinerary

trying to plan the itinerary using proper navigating.

Nonchalant Nate enjoys travel but likes to keep his plans spontaneous, exciting, and most importantly in a budget. He finds it difficult to find time to plan a trip with a full time job and trying to keep his social life. Also he has a small budget and wants to make sure his plans are cheaper or pre-set to make it easier to stay in his budget. Sometimes he doesn’t know where he’ll be traveling to, Nate just knows he wants to go on a trip somewhere new or just for a weekend getaway. He goes for whatever is cheapest and doesn’t travel as often as he wants because he doesn’t have enough time to search all the different travel deal websites like TripAdvisor, TravelZoo, etc. to find the cheapest rates.

Options that are easily accessible and all inclusive will help Nate be able to plan his trips that he wants to take spontaneously and then be able to keep track of where he is going and all the reservations attached to the trip in the single app, instead of digging through emails.

NEEDS:

more time to go on auditions for acting

trips that don't need much planning

discount options when traveling in a new country

Profile:

Age: 35-38 years old

Location: portland, or

Profession: actor/waiter

Former Travels: canada, amsterdam, iceland, mexico, chile, & greece

Behaviors:

works 30-40 hours a week

likes to go out with friends to new restaurants and bars

on a tight budget

likes adventure

pain points:

not enough options for having recommended discount trips

too much time spent trying to find discounts

wants to be spontaneous and go on a last minute trip

Concepts of Travel

Traveling has become a way of life for so many people—as the world gets smaller and smaller—the underlying issue is cost and time to plan a vacation or trip to another country.

As I interviewed these people, I realized that they all want to travel. But time and means of planning made it complicated and in the end led them to travel less and lust for an adventure more.

Travel can be expensive and planning means using a different website for the flight, a different website for the itinerary, then one for the maps, then one or the hotels, etc. The underlying theme I also noticed was they all tended to want to go to a new country for a historic and/or cultural experience.

Their interests also blossomed through imagery they had seen on different websites and social media platforms.

Interviewed 4 People in Person & 7 People Answered Survey

DO YOU PLAN YOUR TRIPS?

HOW DID YOU PLAN THE TRIP?

Planning Experience

Hypothesis

What are your users thinking and feeling?
The common theme amongst the interviewees was that they want to travel more but the amount of time spent planning and the amount of money it cost is preventing them from traveling more often.
What is important to your potential users?
My potential user wants convenience in making their traveling plans and good deals to help them have a cost efficient traveling experience with their friends/family.
What are users seeing, hearing, and doing?
Most users use word of mouth or imagery to inspire their next destination, in hopes to experience a new culture and to marvel at architecture/history/landscapes they can't see back home. They just struggle to plan trips as there are so many different sources needed to plan a trip to get the best deal. Also language barriers can deter a person from traveling to a foreign country for fear of not being able to communicate or getting lost.
How are they dealing with this problem now?
They seem to be avoiding countries where they don't speak the language, as well as planning far in advance to get their travel plans and itinerary in order. Also they plan using many different websites still to get the best deals.
What does the MVP do?
Adding events and tickets to the travelers itinerary for up to 10 trips at a time; whether from pre-planned trips that were added or from recommended trips added from the app.
What are the key features and why?
The key features in the app will help the traveler be able to add up to 10 trips and their itineraries, allow them to keep their reservations/tickets available in the app by attaching them, recommending options for travelers not sure what their plans are yet, give the traveler places and options to add to their itinerary that are around the areas where they are staying.
What are the constraints you have to work with?
Being able to keep track of multiple trips in the app without confusing the user, they need to understand the drop down menu option on the itinerary page to allow them to more easily shuffle through itineraries instead of going back to their profile every time.

User Testing | Round 1

User Test 1
Bottom Navigation isn’t specific enough to understand what each section is for. Had trouble finding “Edit” features on different pages, spent a lot of time clicking around. The labels aren’t clear on the profile, wasn’t sure that they could change the information on the profile page. “Serendipitous Travel” confused them and they thought “Explore” was the same once they got through the on boarding.

User Test 2
They understood the Search button for looking for something specific on that trip. “Serendipitous Travel” is a more exciting thought to them than just adding a trip. Getting recommendations for places to travel excited them and they wished that they could explore it more that I had developed it so far. This user felt the initial adding to the trip field had a white box that appeared to be a button and they kept trying to click it, then they realized what it was for and they didn’t get it. They wanted there to be an option for one way trip options (what if they don’t know when they want to come back?)