TRIPLLAX
A mobile application to make your travel planning in a relaxed way.
This app is the product of my capstone project, the final course of “Interaction Design Specialization” at the University of California, San Diego via Coursera’s platform. I am quite excited to share my experience and design process involved in the development of the prototype.
How I chose my project?
As a part of the course, the design brief was provided under which we had to select an activity that comes under Time, Change or Glance.
Time: Redesign the way we experience or interact with time.
Change: Design an interface that facilitates personal or social behaviour change.
Glance: Find people and design a personal dashboard tailored to their needs.
I chose to “travel” which majorly comes under “Change” but it overlaps with Time and Glance to some extent. After the topic selection, the design process started.
1. Needfinding
To find the design need and opportunities, I interviewed three people to gather insights on how people plan trips. All three participants were different types of travellers. The first participant was 34 years old a solo traveller and does two long trips in a year. Her pain point was when she was making an excel sheet to keep a record of the schedule of her trips. The second participant was a 25 years old IT professional who does multiple trips in a year in groups. His one of the biggest concern is communicating with the group to buy the ticket and splitting the bills in the group. The third participant was a 30 years old landscape architect who takes a long trip in a year with her husband. Her biggest struggle is keeping all the documents together and pulling them out when it’s required.
2. Ideation
For the ideation, I started with brainstorming to generate good and crazy ideas, followed by a point of view.
Brainstorming:
1. Travellers need a way to make sure that their visa is done on time.
2. Travellers need a way to fill their visa forms without much effort.
3. Travellers need a way to know their travel expenses at any point in time.
4. Travellers need to be able to consolidate their documents which are easily accessible at any time.
5. Travellers need to be able to pull out a hotel address quickly before booking a taxi or fill out a visa form.
6. Travellers need to be able to do their tax refunds.
7. Travelers need a way to pack everything they need as per the weather.
8. Travellers need to be able to keep track of currency exchange rates so that they get a good conversion rate.
9. Travellers need a way to know the attractions in the city.
10. Travellers need to be able to find eating places near the attractions in a city.
11. Travellers need to be able to pull out the next day’s itinerary at ease.
12. Travellers need a way to get a reminder about transport timing.
13. Travellers need a way to get a budget alert if the spent amount exceeds a limit.
14. Travelers need a way to get a reminder about keeping travel documents handy before every journey.
15. Travelers need to be able to know the travel distance/time to the next destination.
16. Travellers need a way to make notes about each attraction or restaurants.
17. Travellers need a way to plan itinerary in groups.
18. Travellers need a way to connect to other travellers who are interested in group travels.
Point of View:
Planning for a trip is like working on a project. One needs to plan it over weeks so that when people reach the destination, it should be worry-free for them. But there are many tasks which take a lot of time and effort. Giving a reminder and making a suggestion about things to do can help ease some stress. Organizing information in a format that can be easily glanced or accessed can help travellers enjoy their planning and stay.
Imagine that you are on a two-week trip. You cannot remember when you are going where. How much have you spent and will be spending? Where have you kept your tickets? You spend a lot of time in organizing your trip and documents. It is very important that travellers must be worry-free to enjoy their travel.
and finally, an inspiration board which showcases what inspirations I drew from different existing apps.
Funliday (scheduling for trips): Funliday is a very interactive app to make the schedule for trips. It suggests the distance and time reach the next destination based on maps. It concatenates all the attractions through time and distance.
Trip Advisor (extensive travellers community who are helping each other): Trip Advisor has a lot of features for a traveller but the most exclusive one is the community it has. People in the community help each other by giving suggestions. One just needs to post a query regarding anything related to travel, there are always people to help.
Travel Buddy (compile all documents): This app has a feature of consolidating all the information which are accessed frequently on a trip i.e. Passport, visa, insurance, credit cards, other identification documents, etc.
Packr (travel packing assistant): This app helps in packing by giving a checklist for items under each category like clothes, essentials, documents, etc. One needs to pack and cross it out to keep a track on packing so that travellers can start their trip worry-free.
Rome2rio (best route suggesting app): This app explores all possible routes from one place to another. This helps in making a decision on the type of transport one has to choose.
3. Prototyping
These storyboards illustrate two different design ideas that engage the “Point Of View” to address a user need.
Storyboard-1: Travellers need a way to keep all the documents together on a trip and pull them out when they need them.
Storyboard-2: Travellers need a way to travel in a group and make an itinerary to follow.
Based on Storyboard-1 and other user needs, I added the features to keep a track of expenses, currency, visa and packing for a trip. The features were implemented in the following paper prototype:
Based on the Storyboard-2 and other user needs, I added the features to connect to other travellers and post questions regarding a trip. The features were implemented in the following paper prototype:
4. Heuristic Evaluation
After the prototypes were built, I set an in-person evaluation with a friend to check the normal usability problem with them. I asked the participant to speak aloud as he went through the prototype which helped me to figure out many usability problems.
Then I got them evaluated with other peers who are doing the same capstone project. This time the peers took note on the Heuristic violations I have done my prototypes. Based on the evaluations, the most common problem was with “Freedom” and “Flexibility”. The freedom for users to navigate and do tasks at any time can bring joy to a user’s life. In addition, there were minor consistency issues which I think is very common in the early stage of designs.
I made a consolidated list of heuristic violations with severity ratings and made a list of changes that improved my prototype further.
5. A plan and skeleton
DEVELOPMENT PLAN: After the evaluation, we were asked to make a development plan for the next 4 weeks with deadlines which summarize the goals for the final assignment.
Based on feedback from different users, I was convinced to combine both the prototypes because users need all these features together in a travel app.
6. Ready for Testing
At this stage, I invited two of my friends to test my prototype. I assigned them the task and let them complete the task in 5 minutes maximum. I told them that I am not testing them but the prototype I made. I observed them interacting with it and noted the breakdowns or scope of improvements. This helped me do a few more changes in the prototype.
With this user testing, I found one component which required to be changed. I redesigned it and named it Design-B. Here are the two designed of the same component:
7. A/B Testing
I prepared two different linked designs on Figma with all the navigation called Design-A and Design-B. Then I carried out online user test on User Testing.
I assigned Design-A to two of the users and Design-B to other two. The testing helped me decide that the redesign was more user-friendly and it was adopted in my final design. The user testing also helped me in finding other usability issues with the prototype.
The final part was to promote my prototype by giving it a name and making a promotional video. The name “TRIPLLAX” came from two words- “trip” and “relax”.
Final Prototype
You can find my final prototype here.
