Portfolio
Wander Case Study
Creating a space for people to explore, plan, and share their journeys
in a perfect world
I serendipitously happened to be in Milan in August as it hosted the World Expo. Off the main path, tucked away in the shade, stood a humble stand with two Italian men, one young, the other old, selling homemade cannoli. They were Sicilian and you could tell they were passionate about their craft.
"It was the best cannoli I had ever tasted."
I would go on to tell people it was the best, recommend that they go without understanding the person I was recommending it to because I wanted them to experience what I had experienced. It was certainly the best relative to what I’ve had, but would it be considered the best to someone who makes cannoli for a living?
I became intrigued by this idea of personalization. What if we could cut through the noise, reduce the amount of time people spent researching for a trip? Could we personalize the travel-planning experience to make discovering content relevant to their needs and travel style much more efficient?
Piecemeal travel planning process; travelers have to use various tools and resources, which can make the process overwhelming and cumbersome.
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"How might we reduce the inefficiencies travelers feel around planning by making trip planning feel seamless and connected?"
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“How might we help planners optimize their travel-planning experience, to make it easier to discover content relevant to their needs and travel style?”
TODAY
BLACKBOX
JTBD
"Where are the best places to stay?"
"What are the best activities?"
"Where are the best places to eat?"
my role
A positive travel experience
Sole product designer. Led the process from discovery to proof of concept within a 6-month timespan with a team of 4 - 2 product managers, 2 developers.
UX Research
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Customer Journey Map
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User Interviews
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User Surveys
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Usability Testing
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Wireframes/flows
UI Design
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Branding
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Interaction Design
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Mocks
Management
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Product Vision/Strategy
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Roadmap
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Sprint Planning
Tools Used
Sketch, InVision, Adobe XD, Photoshop, After Effects, ClickUp, Miro, Typeform
MY process
IDEA
RESEARCH
INSIGHTS
divergent
convergent
Discover
Define/
Synthesize
VALIDATED
PROBLEM
STATEMENT
IDEATION
PROTOYPE
divergent
convergent
Brainstorm/
Design/
Test
Iterate/
Test
POC
Discovery
define the problem space
01
USER RESEARCH
02
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
01
DOCUMENT assumptions
Stages
PRIOR TO DEPARTURE
Choose a Destination
Research
Book/Purchase
Document/Organize
Doing
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Look for events/festivals
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Conduct generic Google search
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Ask friends/word of mouth
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Look at bucket list
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Check for airfare deals
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Set up flight alerts
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Look at travel publications
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Look at social media posts
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Is the location safe? Any travel advisories?
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Is it the right season? What's the weather like?
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Are there any deals?
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How much is this going to roughly cost me?
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Ask friends
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Generic Google search
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Travel blogs
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TripAdvisor
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Airbnb
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Instagram
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Lonely Planet
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Pinterest
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YouTube
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Instagram
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Check award flights vs reg purchase flights
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Use credit card to complete booking
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Compare prices
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Ask for people's Venmo account info
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Create Google Doc/Sheet to input research
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Create map for visual representation
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Invite friends to collaborate
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If applicable add:
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Flight info
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Accommodation info
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POIs that they would like to visit
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Notes/Tips
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Photos
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Links
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Hours
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At destination transportation info
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Expenses
Key
Questions
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Is the location safe? Any travel advisories?
-
Is it the right season? What's the weather like?
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Are there any deals?
-
How much is this going to roughly cost me?
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Are there any reviews?
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Are the reviews consistently positive and trustworthy?
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Are there photos?
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Is there availability?
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Is this within my/our budget?
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Is my booking refundable?
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When can I cancel without a fee?
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Should I charge people now or after?
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Which lodging option should we pick?
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What should we do there?
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Where to eat
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Any activities
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Is there anything that we need to book in advance?
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Feel excited to browse travel inspo/ideas
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Excited to see what there is to see, do, eat
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Excited now that things are booked and trip is solidified
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Excited to start initially brainstorming and collaborate with friends
EXPERIENCE
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Feel stressed or bored at work, need a getaway
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Experience research fatigue after looking at multiple sites with multiple reviews
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Frustrated or anxious because can't seem to decide on what to do
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Constantly have to check flight tracker emails
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Unsure if getting the best deal
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There could be a differing tastes leaving the group unable to come to a consensus
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Differing budget expectations
Touchpoints
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Google
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Skyscanner, The Flight Deal
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Expedia, Hotwire, Hotels.com, Orbtiz
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Airbnb
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Chase Travel Portal, Amex Travel Portal
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In-Person
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Trip Advisor
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TripAdvisor
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Expedia, Hotwire, Hotels.com, Orbitz
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Airbnb
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Contiki
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Chase Travel Portal
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Amex Travel Portal
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Travel Agency
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Airline Websites
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Viator
Figure 1. Initial presumed user journey a traveler experiences prior to departing for a trip. Drafted for the team to
have an understanding of the entire planning process.
02
surveys
to test
74.3%
travelers find travel planning to be a cumbersome task
Researching POIs
Route Optimization
Reading Reviews
Organizing Itinerary
Making group decisions
Budgeting
Making Reservations
Figuring out what to pack
0
25
50
75
Figure 2. Time consuming aspects noted by planners in the surveys
03
INTERVIEWS TO dig deeper into planning behavior
While user interviews may not always be feasible given the time or resource constraints, it was a priority for the team to learn how to move away from a feature-first mentality.
The goal of the interviews was to answer the following questions:
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Why do travelers opt to use Google Docs, Sheets and Map?
-
How does the collaboration process work within the aforementioned tools?
-
What variables are taken into consideration when researching?
04 building empathy through Emma
Figure 3. Emma the primary planner persona.
untangling a traveler's scattered journey
Stages
PRIOR TO DEPARTURE
Choose a Destination
Research
Book/Purchase
Document/Organize
Doing
Key
Questions
EXPERIENCE
Touchpoints
-
Look for events/festivals
-
Conduct generic Google search
-
Ask friends/word of mouth
-
Look at bucket list
-
Check for airfare deals
-
Set up flight alerts
-
Look at travel publications
-
Look at social media posts
-
Is the location safe? Any travel advisories?
-
Is it the right season? What's the weather like?
-
Are there any deals?
-
How much is this going to roughly cost me?
-
Ask friends
-
Generic Google search
-
Travel blogs
-
TripAdvisor
-
Airbnb
-
Instagram
-
Lonely Planet
-
Pinterest
-
YouTube
-
Check award flights vs reg purchase flights
-
Use credit card to complete booking
-
Compare prices
-
Ask for people's Venmo account info
-
Create Google Doc/Sheet to input research
-
Create map for visual representation
-
Invite friends to collaborate
-
Flight info
-
Accommodation info
-
POIs that they would like to visit
-
Notes/Tips
-
Photos
-
Links
-
Hours
-
At destination transportation info
-
Expenses
-
Is the location safe? Any travel advisories?
-
Is it the right season? What's the weather like?
-
Are there any deals?
-
How much is this going to roughly cost me?
-
Are there any reviews?
-
Are the reviews consistently positive and trustworthy?
-
Are there photos?
-
Is there availability?
-
Is this within my/our budget?
-
Is my booking refundable?
-
When can I cancel without a fee?
-
Should I charge people now or after?
-
Which lodging option should we pick?
-
What should we do there?
-
Where to eat
-
Any activities
-
Is there anything that we need to book in advance?
-
Feel excited to browse travel inspo/ideas
-
Feel stressed or bored at work, need a getaway
-
Excited to see what there is to see, do, eat
-
Experience research fatigue after looking at multiple sites with multiple reviews
-
Frustrated or anxious because can't seem to decide on what to do
-
Excited now that things are booked and trip is solidified
-
Constantly have to check flight tracker emails
-
Unsure if getting the best deal
-
Excited to start initially brainstorming and collaborate with friends
-
There could be a differing tastes leaving the group unable to come to a consensus
-
Differing budget expectations
-
Google
-
Skyscanner, The Flight Deal
-
Expedia, Hotwire, Hotels.com, Orbtiz
-
Airbnb
-
Chase Travel Portal, Amex Travel Portal
-
In-Person
-
Trip Advisor
-
Google
-
Expedia, Hotwire, Hotels.com, Orbitz
-
Airbnb
-
In-Person
-
Trip Advisor
-
Yelp
-
(Any other platforms with reviews)
-
TripAdvisor
-
Expedia, Hotwire, Hotels.com, Orbitz
-
Airbnb
-
Contiki
-
Chase Travel Portal
-
Amex Travel Portal
-
Travel Agency
-
Airline Websites
-
Viator
-
Google Sheet
-
Google Doc
-
Google My Map
-
Google Maps
-
TripIt
-
MS Word
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MS Excel
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Asana
-
Trello
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Pen & Paper
Figure 1. Initial presumed user journey a traveler experiences prior to departing for a trip. Drafted for the team to have an understanding of the entire planning process.
identifying pain points
74.3%
of travelers find travel planning to be a cumbersome task
Researching POIs
Route Optimization
Reading Reviews
Making group decisions
Budgeting
Making Reservations
Organizing Itinerary
Figuring out what to pack
0
25
50
75
Figure 2. Time consuming aspects noted by planners in the surveys
other listed common pain points:
Lack of structure and organization when using Google
suite of tools
Inefficiency when entering duplicate information between Google Docs/Sheets and Maps
Research fatigue and difficulty in making decisions
While user interviews may not always be feasible given the time or resource constraints, it was a priority for the team to learn how to move away from a feature-first mentality.
The goal of the interviews was to answer the following questions:
-
Why do travelers opt to use Google Docs, Sheets, and Map?
-
How does the collaboration process work within the aforementioned tools?
-
What variables are taken into consideration when researching?
digging deeper into planning behavior
building empathy through Emma
Figure 3. Emma the primary planner persona.
the opportunities to pursue
-
“How might we help planners optimize their travel-planning experience, to make it easier to discover relevant content tailored to their needs and travel style?”
-
“How might we reduce the inefficiencies travelers feel around planning by making trip-planning feel seamless and connected?”
Ideation
What is the mvp?
01
SECONDARY RESEARCH
02
WIREFRAMES/
FLOWS
03
TESTING
a LOOK at past
itineraries
Our brainstorming process started with looking at past user-generated itineraries. We analyzed over 45 itineraries, including Google Docs, Sheets, Maps, MS Word, and Excel, to find commonalities and extract feature ideas.
Figure 4. Sample itineraries gathered from travelers using Google Doc and Sheets to collaborate and organize their trips.
FEEDBACK FROM TESTING
One reoccurring question was, "where are the recommendations, the list of suggested places?" This was a feature the team went back and forth on, and it was a piece of feedback we wanted to explore.
We tested the concept of providing "inspiration", curating points of interest through various sources like, e.g., TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google Reviews, Lonely Planet.
But what we quickly realized is this pulled the user in two different directions; the objective became unclear. Would we focus on being a customizable platform to replace existing tools like Google Sheet/Doc, or a personalized recommendations platform to replace Lonely Planet, TripAdvisor? With limited resources, we couldn't tackle both.
So we asked ourselves, which path would create the most value for Emma given the least effort?
Creating wireFRAMES
generating ideas quickly on paper
Taking a section of the design sprint, I introduced the crazy 8's method to the team to quickly generate ideas on paper.
Voted on features and created initial
story board/user stories.
Figure 5. Paper sketches from initial brainstorm.
translating to wireframes to conduct guerilla tests
Once we agreed on the initial layout and flow, I proceeded to create low-fidelity wireframes for us to quickly test the overall concept.
Introduced concept to "Emma"
Figure 6. Initial wireframes
Figure 7. Revised wireframes to test "get inspiration" concept.
While an initial HMW was:
“How might we help planners optimize their travel-planning experience, to make it easier to discover content relevant to their needs and travel style?”
We decided to park personalization and focus solely on creating a robust planner travelers could use to organize and collaborate with others.
diving into wireFLOWS
After updating the low-fidelity wireframes, to get additional feedback, I put together a wireflow to outline the red routes and give context behind why Emma would interact with the features.
This proved to be a much more efficient method for collecting feedback. It helped people, as well as our team, understand why we included specific features in the MVP and how the planner worked as a whole since the process wasn't quite linear.
Figure 8. Wireflow outlining the happy path Emma would take to plan her adventure to NYC.
CONTINUED TESTING
Pain points
Unclear what "Page 1" means and what do users get by adding other pages.
Users did not immediately interact with the bar of categories. Assumed it was a navigation menu rather
than a template builder.
Unclear how to add additional cards to the categories.
Solutions/Takeaways
Rename 'Pages' to suggested page names to reduce cognitive load and provide familiarity.
Make the blank state as user friendly as possible. Instead of having users build their template, have components like card, map, and calendar pre-populated.
Be mindful of copy and limit the number of competing CTAs to reduce cognitive load. How might we enable users to quickly add points of interest they've researched?
MVP CONCEPT
From the initial ideation phase, after multiple workshops, an MVP concept emerged:
A trip productivity app, an Asana or Trello, tailored to travel planning to make it simple and fun to plan and collaborate on group trips.
HIGH FIDELITY
01
BRANDING
02
MOCKS
03
TESTING
Journey to POC
PERSONALIty definition
Once we went through a few more iterations before tackling the visual design, we defined the brand. It was helpful to start with a mood board, curating images Emma would be inspired by.
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Exploratory
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Adventurous
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Trustworthy
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Educational
Figure 9. Defining Wander's brand identity.
MOCKS
take one
The main issues we wanted to address from our llow-fidelity user testing was the following:
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Provide clarity around how to add POIs to the planner
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Provide clarity around how to use "categories" to help organize the planner
Figure 10. Initial high-fidelity mocks of the planner template.
continued testing
While the overall planner concept had taken form, continued testing unveiled further usability issues. For example, there remained confusion around the bottom bar's functionality or "pages", a design pattern borrowed from Google Sheets. Although I removed the top categories bar from the low-fidelity designs altogether, there was ambiguity around the default categories like 'Notes' and 'Poll' and what clicking on the additional 'plus' button would result in.
These were major if not critical usability issues. This was a moment to recalibrate the design because while we were already in high-fidelity, we had not started development. I re-evaluated the designs with the team and decided to shift how we approached the planner, breaking it into 3 main components - points of interest, map, and schedule. This made it easier to test and develop features in isolation.
MOCKS
take two
With this next iteration -
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Pages were removed along with any horizontal navigation patterns to test vertical navigation. This separated and organized categories, especially as we started to think about accounting for multiple locations.
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Map and schedule were added to the primary view to remove pages to present a friendlier blank state.
Figure 11. Redesigned planner template.
incremental Development
further testing & the green light for dev
With the latest iteration, I set out to conduct further user testing and saw a drastic shift in people's reaction to the tool and how they interacted with it. With just minor usability issues, I made the call to start incrementally developing the planner in the following priority:
1. POIs
Goal: As a planner who has researched a destination, reading several articles, blogs, travel sites, I want to document the places I'm interested in going to easily.
Figure 11. Card designs to showcase how planners can add places.
2. MAP
Goal: As a planner who has just entered several locations, I want to quickly visualize where places are in relation to each other.
Figure 12. Map designs to showcase a visual overview of the places added to their planner.
3. SCHEDULE
Goal: As a planner who has added several locations, I want to start narrowing down the places to visit and put together an itinerary for the days I'll be traveling.
Figure 13. Schedule design to showcase how a planner can put together an itinerary.
In Conclusion:
a retro
and what's next
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When starting with an idea, the possibilities of what can be are endless. My role here was to lay the foundation, collect qualitative data, and lead the team to a proof of concept to iterate further.
What proved to be a complex challenge was finding the right balance of autonomy to give Emma, our primary planner persona, to customize her planner without presenting too many options. The team wasn't always in agreement, but we respected differing perspectives. I was proud of the team's ability to advocate for Emma, and we resolved our impasses through user testing. We gathered the most insightful feedback through testing and drove the project forward.
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We tested concepts early on with travel planners and thoroughly tested designs before starting any development. Even so, there were still minor usability issues that emerged in the developed prototype. Some of these were due to unaccounted for edge cases. To alleviate this, as part of the design audit/review process, we discuss possible cases and decide which ones to account for in the designs. Moving forward, I will also conduct further discoverability tests or task-based tests to help improve the design as each testing session significantly reduces the hours of dev rework needed.
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While it may have been a costly upfront investment for the entire team to spend time conducting user interviews and subsequent user tests, I believe it was necessary and positively impacted how the team approaches our design review discussions.