— PRODUCT
Trippin
— ROLE
Product Designer
— DURATION
4 Weeks
During the time I studied abroad in France in Summer 2019, me and my classmates struggled to manage the intense schedule with the strong desire to travel to as many places as possible. We tried group chats on Messenger, Google Docs, or even the old-school way- writing and drawing on paper. However, it was still hard for all of us to keep on track and to follow the plan.
I took the opportunity to create the concept of this project, with the advise from a senior designer and two professors from UC Davis, I came up with this project.
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The Problem
It is easy to lose track and difficult to sync all the information in group discussion when planning a trip with friends.
The Solution
A mobile app to facilitate planning a trip between friends.
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• Plan your adventure only within a few steps.
- • Invite your trip buddies to edit the trip together.
- • Discover great plans near your community.
What I have done
• I interviewed prospective users during my travels around Europe and in the United States and collected their feedback.
• I defined the product with a senior designer. We worked together closely to identify user challenges and decided the possible features to be included.
• I created prototypes to test in a group of students, to guide my decisions. I further sought feedback from professors in the Department of Design in UC Davis, which helped me to negotiate the main features of this app concept.
• I developed the visual branding, including color, typography, logo, and components.
How Does it Work?
Create a plan within a few steps
Some trips are more complex than others. Selecting a type can help guide your path, reducing frustration.
Invite friends to join the trip
You’ll be able to share ideas easily and get everyone involved in planning the adventure.
Explore the adventure together
After your friends join the trip, they’ll be able to edit the trip with you. Anytime, anywhere.
The Process
Identify Users and Goal
It is easy to lose track and difficult to sync all the information in group discussion when planning a trip with friends.
Target Users
Travel lovers, adventure explorers, and nature lovers who like traveling with friends but have experienced the difficulties of keeping track of a group plan.
The Goal
The goal is to serve our target users with an easy to navigate planning task flow, to facilitate planning a trip between friends by offering a less frustrating experience.
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Sketch possible features
•Type of trips
•Invite Friends
•Search hotels and stores
•Notify friends
•Co-edit the trip
Insights
- •Searching hotels and stores can be done on other apps
- •Complexity level can be identified by different color cards
- •Sync the fragmented information rather than offering more information
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Negotiate features
We decided to use information input feature rather than giving search results in the app. We found that Yelp, Booking, or TripAdvisor, etc. already provide a good experience for users to get inspiration about traveling. The main purpose of our app is to sync all this fragmented information our users collected.
Sync the fragmented information steps
Insights
- •Make the information input task simple and easy to understand.
- •Narrow down the features of our app to encourage people to take the leap.
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User testing
After the first prototype, I tested in a group of students to gain insights and feedback on the information architecture understanding.
I also collected the data of the failure and success rates of understanding the CTA prompts.
The main tasks are:
- Sign up - Create a plan – Invite friends – Edit the the trip
- From the invitation recipient’s perspective, the main tasks are:
- Check the invitation – Join the trip – Edit the trip
Initial Prototype
Insights
- •The steps of inviting friends can be simplified.
- •Users expect to see a feedback after creating a plan successfully
- •“Adding a plan detail” should be a CTA button which can easily be seen on editing the plan page.
- •“Contact list” page can be replaced by “Activity” page to let users manage the requests easily.
- •The CTA phrases “Yay,” “Sounds Good,” and “Yay! Got a Plan” are not strong enough to let users understand which step they are on.
Changes made based on the insights
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Refine user task flow
Based on the feedback from my tested users, I refined the task flow to make it more straightforward and easy to understand. I simplified the CTA phrase, guiding users to finish the task more easily.
Refined task flow
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Branding the product
The goal is making co-editing trip plans between friends easier, so the design should be simple and intuitive and should not make users overthink.
I worked with a senior designer to get suggestions on how to improve the visual design.
Product Branding
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Possible features to explore
- Discovery Feed
Within this page, users can discover and explore the fun trips nearby. Users can also ask to join others’ trips to meet new travel friends. By tapping the filter, users can choose to see one specific type of trip or even the trips in other states or countries!
- Different complexity of the planning process
By selecting different types of trips, users will be directed to different information input architecture. It fulfills different groups of users’ needs in different circumstances.
Measure of success
- I would like to measure these metrics in order to understand if this design is successful (with more data support)
- • Active users rate
- • Trip plan completed rate
- • The percentage of users that return to the app in a period of time
Learning
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- Don’t make users think twice, the visual design should save users' time.
- The design of the components, cards, color, etc. should emphasize the function of the features, being simple and consistent to help users finish the task flow without thinking about why they are designed in this way.
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- The product should communicate with the users directly and efficiently.
- The CTA will lead users to finish the task flow without noticing how many steps they go through. Users can understand the language of the product easily and effortlessly.
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- Designers should care about the emotions of users while testing the product and think why.
- User-centered design cares about how users react to the product and think about the meaning of each task. Most importantly, we care about how users feel when they experience the product, observing and noting the reaction of users during the testing process, along with interviewing users on how they feel about each task they go through. We also want to take more time to think about why the users do what they do, and how to help them improve their experience.
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- To fail faster, to learn faster, and find a balance.
- The product objective can go in another completely different direction if there is more research data from the market to be analyzed. I have brainstormed many features to address the users’ needs and make it as fast as I can to test on the people around me in order to get feedback from mentors and professors. It was hard to abandon a feature on the app which I was proud of, but I have learned to make better design decisions from the mistakes I make.