Plantripist 2019

“With more millennials using their resources to travel the world, how can we make the trip planning experience more convenient and efficient?”

BACKGROUND

Plantripist is a mobile app which helps users to easily customize their own trip during the planning process.

DURATION

8 weeks

TOOLS

Adobe XD, Photoshop, Illustrator, draw.io

DELIVERABLE

High Fidelity Clickable Prototype

INDUSTRIAL KNOWLEDGE

User Research, User Interviews, Ideation, Sketching, Usability Testing, Prototyping, Branding, UX Design, UX Strategy, Interaction Design, User Testing, UI Design

RESEARCH

Identifying Product Opportunities: The SET Factors

Empathy Map

Observational Research

People use a lot of strength & energy for planning trips.
Millennials prefer to find unique travel experiences
Millennials use unofficial websites to find travel recommendations
People who are active on social media would like to share their personal experiences on public platforms.
The planning process is consuming 4-6 hours depending on the type of trip.
Experienced people know what to prioritize most times but sometimes they need help in regards to planning their trip

Interviews

For citizens of certain countries, if they have a chance to travel abroad, they would love to travel to more than only one place, since it is hard for them to get the travel visa.
Instead of depending on an agency to plan their trip, they prefer to plan the trip on their own, which makes them feel a sense of achievement
Interviewers will check the recommendations of other travelers and adjust their plans
The most important thing for interviewers when planning the trip is to allocate time. They don’t want to wake up too early but still want to visit highlight landmarks
Some of the interviewers who live in China face a problem while finding the route and destination for their trip because the Google is blocked in China and Baidu is unable to show maps of places outside of China. As a result, they cannot find the route and destination for their trip.
While traveling, if interviewers want to try a local restaurant, they will ask servers to recommend a dish
The interviewers feel that planning a trip is a time-consuming and energy draining activity.
If there is some tool which could aid travelers in planning the trip, interviewers think that it would be really useful.
Prioritizing the things to be taken along.
They do planning of itinerary but not really go through detail.

User Persona +Scenario

Target User: Leisure traveler (millennial)

Secondary Users: business traveler and others who need aid while planing the trip

After finding out the above about our users, we then created our primary and secondary personas. I consolidated and analyzed results from interviews and research to create a user persona and develop a scenario. I made sure to consider details like how often they travel, travel apps they use, and their frustrations with the current way of planning travel. This helped me design a solution that would solve specific problems for a specific type of user

Female | 21-year old

College student who takes a gap year for traveling

Vivian

Vivian is a leisure traveler and classic type of millennial. She likes to take various clothes to style her outfit and take fabulous pictures to display her great taste in order to upload on social media. She likes to follow influential celebrities on social media and go to the places where they have been to as well.

Female | 27-year old

Marketing manager of a national well-known company

Jessica

Jessica is a successful businesswoman. She is a young adult who knows how to find the balance between work and life. She travels a lot for international meetings and conferences but she also uses those opportunities to explore the different cities after work. Visiting the museum, going clubbing and hiking all interest her but she doesn't have that much time for planning.

Male | 32-year-old

Musician

Alan

Alan is a professional guitar player. Although he travels a lot for holding concerts, he always brings his girlfriend, Lily, with him. Since he knows he doesn't really have that much time to spend with Lily, making his girlfriend happy and playing the guitar are the most important things for him.

"Life is about courage and going to the unknown."

-Vivian

"Work to Live, Don't Live to Work."

-Jessica

"Guitar is my second life,Lily is the rest of my life."

-Alan

DESIGN

Information architecture (Function map)

I mapped out the application for Plantripest, which shows the main four functions—Explore, Scrapbook, Itineraries, and Profile. I also named the number for each page in order to organize easily.

User Flow

Based on my research and Information architecture, user flows and wireframes were designed to define the flow and interactions of the application, creating a smooth journey for users. I used markers and a whiteboard to brainstorm about the user flow based on the user scenario. This step helped me clarify the details for every interface and element of the app that our user would interact with.

Sketched Wireframes

Branding

The concept of Plantripist comes from plan plus trip. I combined the images of the pin on the map for pointing out destinations and pencil for planning the trip to design this LOGO. For the color palette, I used red, yellow and blue as the main color of Plantripist.

User Interface Design

PROTOTYPE

Mid-Fi

Key features

Personalized settings

For the new users, they will ask a few questions for the estimate of their personal preferences. In the explore page, Plantripist will display the recommendations based on their answers in the beginning.

2. Integrated community platform

Users can select different preferences for filters before a search. After that, the results are collected from various social platforms such as Instagram, Google Plus, Facebook, and Pinterest. These results also are separated by hotel, restaurant, and landmark.

3. Handy planning for itinerary

Users can see the details about the place and operating times to help easily schedule the itinerary. For example, if users put an event which is not operating yet in that slot, it will remind them of the available slots.

4. Viewing Scrapbook by list or map

Users can save the items from exploring to Scrapbook. In the Scrapbook, users can view those items either by list or map.

Clickable High-Fi

Here is the final prototype of the app, click it to interact!

REFLECTION

Takeaways

Design thinking is not merely a fancy word but it aids the design process to solve real problems. As a result, the main takeaway I learned from this personal project is how to organize rational and logical design thinking in order to optimize the design project.

As a product designer and a type of target user, I realized that my own blind spots would influence my design. As a result, it is important to critically examine the reasons behind every design decision.

Information architecture is the root of UI/UX design. Without a solid foundation, the whole process such as mapping user flows, building prototypes and iterating user journeys becomes chaotic and vague.

Next Step

I would like to refine the clickable prototype and test the usability of Plantripest. After that, I will conduct and collect more user testing and surveys with different users. In this way, I can gather various feedback and insights from them. I would keep exploring other handy ways to aid users' planning and discover which method works the best from a user’s viewpoint. There is always room for improving, and continuously iterating will allow for users to have a more effective planning experience.

Olivia H.