Travel Buddy-UI/UX Case study
Travel Buddy is a online travel review service platform that enables travelers, businesspeople to explore popular sights, provide ratings, setup their own business locations and access to other services provided by it. Our platform provides multiple services which include primary services such as sights, shops, restaurants, hotels and spa's. Public services such as transport facilities, gas stations, banks and ATM's. Emergency services such as Police, Hospital and Fire station. Users don't need to go to other platform as we provide the overall services the users need.
Project Goals and Duration
To Provide user friendly application for travelers and business people to explore popular sights and setup a new business. The Project started on july 2021 and completed on october 2021.
My Roles
My role in this project is UI/UX Designer designing app " Travel Buddy" from conception to delivery.
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Responsibilites
My responsibilites include Conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies.
Primary Design
Before designing a complete product, I decided to build some main screen where users will know overview of the product.The aim of the primary design is to get feedback from the user. Based on the feedback given by the user, will help me to understand user needs and designing better UI for the application.
Interviews
With the knowledge of Design Thinking and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG‘s) I conducted interviews with 4 different categories of users, namely Vishwath Kirupa a busy working adult of 29 years, Nisha Ummakki a final year B.Ed student of 22 years ,Thejesh a college student of 19 years and finally
EG Subramani retired mathematics teacher of 77 years.
Interview goals
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I want to understand common challenges people face when moving to a new location / planning for a trip
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I want to identify the user pain points in the primary design
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Interview questions
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Describe your overview of the app?
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What problem you face when you are going to a new location ?(Travellers)
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What problem you face when you start a new business store? (Business people)
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Describe how the app will solve your problem?
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Describe the challenges to be solved in the app ?
Empathizing with users
Using the data collected from interviews, I defined the three target group profiles EG Subramani (Teacher, 75), Viswath kirupa (Employee, 29), Nisha (Student, 22) and Thejesh (Student 19) [since Nisha and Thejesh are both college students they fall under the same category] to better empathize with my main user groups and prioritize goals according to their need and I built empathy map which indicates what user says, thinks, does and feels. From the empathy map i will build user personas which will connect the user goals and their pain points.
Part- A Building Empathy map
Part- B Building user personas
User Journey Map
From the user personas we can identify the user's goals and pain points they are experiencing with the product.
The user journey app goes more depth on the user which helped to better understand the phases as well as the user and their experience in them. Here user actions for each stages are noted as well as the user's feeling for the each phase are noted briefly and also improvement opportunities for each phase are provided. The below image is a user journey map of Viswath Kirupa
Competitive Audit
Conducting research on competitors is the cornerstone to understanding my product, the landscape of my industry and my users. Competitive audit is the best way to understand my competitors and how well my product can be improved better than their product. So here I am going to compare my product over my competitor's product starting from visual design, user experience in both platforms, features provided, accessibility, user flow, navigation, brand identity and their tone. This helps me to identify my competitor's weakness which will open opportunities to my product.
Story Boarding
Story boarding really helps understand the user's emotion and experience with the product. Here we are building two types of storyboard A- big picture story board which focuses on user's emotion with the product that illustrates user's pain points and provide solution to address those pain points. B- close up storyboard which focuses on user interaction with the product.
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So for my travel buddy app I created two types of storyboards, one who likes to travel and explore the places & one who needs to setup their business store.
Scenario 1 : For Travellers / Explorers.
Scenario 2 : For starting new business
Site Map
Based on the insights gained from the user personas and competitive audits, I defined the sitemap for my Travel buddy app and then evaluated it via tree tests with potential users.
Sitemap Overview
Sitemap- detailed features
Wireframing and Prototyping
From the site map I built low-fidelity prototypes using figma, as low-fidelity prototypes are easy to implement
also can be easily tested on users. Without much effort, adjustments could be made before going into digital implementation.
Low-fidelity Wireframe
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High Fidelity Prototype and Usability testing
After some paper prototyping adjustments, wireframes, mid- and high-fidelity prototypes were created. We tested users based on usability testing, where users are given the prompts to do on the low-fi prototypes. In addition, the users asked smart questions, which led to further improvements.
STYLE GUIDE
UX Research in progress
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TAKEAWAYS
Impact
The app makes users feel like Travel Buddy really thinks about how to meet their needs.
Learning Outcome
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Take small steps, because big changes can not be brought overnight, especially not just by an application alone.
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Journey mapping is very helpful, on the one hand to put a comprehensive process on paper and to uncover problematic and promising points.
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Empathize with users and stakeholders and always be ready to accept the change.
Next Steps
To Conduct another round of usability studies to validate whether the pain points users experienced have been effectively addressed.