Create a responsive, simple, and intuitive way for travelers to connect with experts from different parts of the world.
UX Designer and Researcher
8 Months
Travelers face challenges in identifying criminal activity, finding less crowded tourist spots, and discovering authentic local activities. Lack of guidance leads to safety concerns, overcrowded attractions, and a generic travel experience.
Develop a versatile app connecting users with locals and travel experts, fostering seamless communication and valuable recommendations. Incorporate Map features to pinpoint safety zones, ensuring travelers can explore confidently. This app enhances user experiences by facilitating direct connections and promoting safe travel.
Conduct research to better understand users' way of thinking, doing, and feeling
Define the primary problem or pain point the user is experiencing
Brainstorming creative solutions
Design and build a preliminary model of the solution(s)
Conduct testing with users and iterate based on feedback
First we will need to understand what were the thoughts and feelings of the participants. I conducted interviews with 3 participants to gain valuable insight about their overall experiences, goals, needs, ideas, and feelings.
• Identify and document user's pain points and frictions while navigating through the app
• Understand user's goals, needs, and behaviors during user testing
• Discover potential users that would use the platform and under what conditions
• Gather qualitative and quantitative data that could help present ideas or improvement for the application
I will be conducting interviews with the users to provide more insight about the user’s perceptions, experiences, and values. This will help provide a better understanding of how user feel and talk about issues in an intimate setting. Users can express themselves when talking about the issues with the service/product, what are their goals, needs, expectations, or what do they like about the product/service.
• Participants would prefer to get recommendation from locals or frequent traveler
• Overpopulated/touristy areas give participant bad experiences
• Communicating with experts can likely increase their travel experience
• Traveler would like to explore at night without having to worry about safety
• Users would like to plan out their trips than buying from bundle offer
• International travel, users do not have access to data or Wifi
Competitive analysis is a great way to gain insights of competitor's app features and flow. Utilizing SWOT analysis technique, I was able to identify each of their strengths, weaknesses, users' pain points, and improve on areas that theirapp lacks to incorporate into Voyage.
Utilizing the insights gathered from interview, competitive analysis, and user research, I created two user personas which will help me make informed decisions during the whole process of designing the app. These personas will be the target audience.
To have a better understanding of where our users are coming from and what they want to do, I came up with hypothetical scenarios and create the user journey mapping
The design goal for this project was to create three core functions of the app. I wanted to visualize what a user might navigate through a particular feature. The three main user flows are checking the safety of an area, locate wifi and download map, and chatting with experts or locals.
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I conducted a closed card sorting and created 20 different categories. Participants had to sort out and put in places where it made the most sense to them. As a result, I was able to create and refine my site map.
Creating the sitemap helped me narrow down to the essential pages for the app. Some cards had repetitive functionality and were merged with other groups. Once I have a solid idea of mapping out the sitemap I can move forward to creating wireframes
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I started sketching low-fidelity wireframes using pen and paper. Once had a general idea of how certain functions and internal structure of each page, I begin creating low-fidelity prototype and mid-fidelity prototype.
To determine whether participants are able to achieve certain tasks or become frustrated with the application functionality. Additionally, to analyze the results, closely observe participants performances, body languages, and attitude.
• Determine if users can communicate with experts
• Note if users understand how to scan for crime activity
• Understand if users know how to save their point of interest to their itinerary
• Determine if users can communicate with experts
• Assess how quickly users can complete multiple tasks
• Observe users'body language, attitude, and overall performance
The test was conducted in-person ormoderated remotely via Skype
Recruited 3-5 volunteers to participate in this study. All participants are from different demographic backgrounds and have little to no knowledge of the app.
Issue 1: Users were not able to determine the difference between the search bar and Map
Suggested Change: Changed the search bar as a filter search instead of going to the map. This way the search results will be a list of activities with the desired location.
Issue 2: Users were not able to determine the difference between ‘Chat’ and ‘Ask an Expert’
Suggested Change: Combined 'Chat' and 'Ask an Expert' to avoid any confusion.
Conducted a usability test using the UsabilityHub platform with 12 responses. Participants were recruited from the Slack community, CareerFoundry, and personal network. Design selection was based on the quantitative results derived from A/B testing learnings. Tests were conducted on the overall color, layouts, map legions, fonts, etc.
Primary font type family is Proxima Nova; part of the san sarif family. One of the most popular fonts to use today. With this font users will be able to read easily.
Icons are display throughout the app to help users navigate through pages. Icons comes in various sizes, but must be legible for users to read and identify
Using a 4 column grid system to help organize all elements within each pages.
Responsive UI elements.
Maintaining encouraging and supportive language style for user.
Prioritizing. Prioritizing which problems to address is a tough task to accomplish. As the project progressed, more problems occurred after solving one problem and becomes harder to prioritize them. A good designer must identify and understand the main issue while maintaining their problem statement, ensuring the project will stay on track.
Information. Throughout the project, there was a lack of qualitative and quantitative data to identify users' pain points. In order to overcome this challenge, more tests and interviews were conducted.
• Make minor changes to the overall layout of the Home,Map, Expert, and Itinerary page to look cleaner
• Improve color legend and "Safety Scan" button positioning on Map
• Update Map to include options to report an incident
• Modernize the design of the overall interface
To conduct additional usability testing, A/B testing, and interviews to further understand the effectiveness of the app. The feedback from the testing can help improve areas that need to be adjusted. With more users who are susceptible to the tasks given from the usability test, I can begin planning a soft launch of the application to gather more feedback from other users besides the target audience.
I learned to establish an intuitive way for users to utilize the search and itinerary feature. Users should be able to do this seamlessly without issues. The flow of this feature had to undergo a few changes, such as where users would find certain activities or how they can add to the itinerary.
On the Map page, multiple features must be implemented in order for it to flow, such as the search bar, navigation button, key legend, etc. The safety button was strategically positioned in a way that doesn't hinder the user's usage of other features.
Users were comfortable using the chat feature since the layout was similar to iOS iMessage. The functionality is similar and required minor adjustments with each fidelity prototype. There were more concerns about the user interface than the user experience.
