Portfolio
Wander Case Study


Creating a community for people to explore, plan, and share their journeys
why build wander?
Wander was born out of a desire to personalize travel exploration. The preponderance of choice has overwhelmed our ability to identify and filter what's most significant to us. The "you can have it all and do it all" culture exaggerated by social media has left us with a scarcity mindset. Our search for the "best", often tunnels us into hours of research, reading site after site, review after review, resulting in research fatigue and decision paralysis.
"What are the best places to vacation?" "Where are the best tropical places to vacation?" "What are the best beach resorts to visit?" "What are the best adult-only resorts to visit?" "What are the best resorts that won't break the bank?". How often do we search for the "best" of something, knowing that terms like "best", "top", "fun", "cheap" are subjective?
We decided to explore if we could tailor "best" and "top" places to go, eat, stay, specifically to an individual.
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my role
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Sole product designer/founder. I led the process from discovery to proof of concept within a 6-month timespan with a team of 4 - 2 PM interns, 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
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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
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Tools Used
Sketch, InVision, Adobe XD, Photoshop, After Effects, ClickUp, Miro, Typeform
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The DESIGN process
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This case study will cover the research we conducted to inform the solutions we initially explored and eventually developed into our first proof of concept.
IDEA
RESEARCH
INSIGHTS
divergent
convergent
VALIDATED
PROBLEM
STATEMENT
IDEATION
PROTOTYPE
divergent
convergent
POC
Discover
Define/
Synthesize
Brainstorm/
Design/
Test
Iterate/
Test
Discovery
Defining the problem
01
USER RESEARCH
02
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
01
DOCUMENT assumptions
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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?
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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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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
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
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74.3%
travelers find travel planning to be a cumbersome task
Researching POIs
Route Optimization
Reading Reviews
Organizing Itinerary
Budgeting
Making Reservations
Figuring out what to pack
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25
50
75
Figure 2. Time consuming aspects noted by planners in the surveys

04 building empathy through Emma
Figure 3. Emma the primary planner persona.
the kickoff
untangling a traveler's scattered journey
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We mapped the presumed user journey to guide us through discovery. What opportunity areas could we further explore? While initial interviews covered pre-trip, during-trip, and post-trip, subsequent interviews focused specifically on the pre-trip phase. We found that the bulk of the time and effort was spent in this area and therefore modified the user journey accordingly after a series of surveys and interviews.
Stages
PRIOR TO DEPARTURE
Choose a Destination
Research
Book/Purchase
Document/Organize
Doing
Key
Questions
EXPERIENCE
Touchpoints
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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
-
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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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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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
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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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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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Feel stressed or bored at work, need a getaway
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Excited to see what there is to see, do, eat
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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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Excited now that things are booked and trip is solidified
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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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Excited to start initially brainstorming and collaborate with friends
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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
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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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Google
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Expedia, Hotwire, Hotels.com, Orbitz
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Airbnb
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In-Person
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Trip Advisor
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Yelp
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(Any other platforms with reviews)
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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
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Google Sheet
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Google Doc
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Google My Map
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Google Maps
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TripIt
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MS Word
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MS Excel
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Asana
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Trello
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Pen & Paper
Figure 1. A traveler's journey prior to departing for a trip.
early insights to drive research
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What we knew was based on observations, assumptions, and personal experiences. Would others feel the same? I created and distributed a number of surveys to further flesh out assumptions.
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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 travelers in the 100+ responses received in the surveys.
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From our surveys, we were able to identify several time-consuming areas associated with travel planning. 'Researching POIs' 'and 'route optimization' were at the top, with "reading reviews" and "making group decisions" following closely behind. This gave us a lead to continue digging deeper to understand the whys.
The goal was to gain clarity on the responses received:
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Understand the research process from the 'I want to get away' to 'time to make a plan' moment. Why does researching POIs take a "long time"? What variables are taken into consideration? Do people experience research fatigue or burnout?
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How do travelers currently optimize their routes? Can we objectively define what to optimize for?
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How do groups come to a consensus? How do they collaborate?
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​​​digging further into planning behavior
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deciding who to initally build for​
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While we discovered nuances from interview to interview, a general pattern to planning emerged. Once identified, we stopped interviewing and synthesized our research into our persona, Emma.
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ATTRIBUTES & behaviors
Emma, a young working professional, without kids, enjoys traveling ~5X a year, mostly domestic trips but will go on at least one, if not 2 international trips. She prefers to travel with a small group of friends (2-4); more manageable in terms of preferences/travel styles, can share expenses as well as memories. She'll often take the initiative to start planning and use a combination of tools to organize and collaborate with her friends. Typically they'll go through a brainstorming phase and narrow down their list of POIs until they have a loosely formed itinerary.
Searches for "top" or "best" things to do in [city].
Looks for resources that include reviews and/or photos.
May ask other friends for itinerary input, but tends not to remember unless it comes up in conversation.
PAIN POINTS


TOOLS
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Lack of organization and good visuals when using Google Sheets or Docs.
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Experiences research fatigue when sifting through reviews and photos; multi-day process, spending at least 2-3 hours a day.
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Optimizing travel routes.
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Uses a variety of tools/resources to keep track of planning info/itinerary, information is siloed.
Group trip planning can be tiresome if no one takes the initiative, but the person who takes the initiative can also find it tiring if no one tends to respond or provide input.
"
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GOALS
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Needs to be able to easily decide on where to stay, what to do, and where to eat. Wants to have a "local" experience.
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Needs a balance of pre-planned vs unplanned activities/eateries; wants to leave room to roam and explore.
Figure 3. Emma the primary planner persona.
how might we solve emma's pain points?
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Travel planning involves various elements—inspiration, investigation, purchase, preparation, etc.—and Emma has different needs at each stage. We found from the interviews that inefficiencies with planning are mainly concentrated in the time-to-make-a-plan phase. Revisting the journey, we explored each of the different opportunities, but for the purposes of this case study, we'll continue with "How might we capture places Emma and her friends want to go to in order to provide tailored content?".
Time to make a plan
Let's book it
Can't wait to explore
I want to get away
How might we help Emma find personalized recommendations from people she trusts?
How might we capture places Emma and her friends want to go to in order to provide tailored content?
How might we make group decision making easy for Emma and her friends?
How might we help with route optimization?
Bespoke trip productivity app- an Asana or Trello tailored for trip planning
Ideation
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What is the mvp?
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01
SECONDARY RESEARCH
02
WIREFRAMES/
FLOWS
03
TESTING
a dive into historical data
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Our brainstorming process began with gathering past user-generated itineraries. We analyzed over 45 itineraries, including Google Docs, Sheets, Maps, MS Word, and Excel, to extract commonalities.
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We took a deep dive to look for
patterns




and found overlap with pois,
notes, hours, links, addresses ...
screenshots, schedule breakdowns,
reservation confirmations
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Figure 4. Sample itineraries gathered from travelers using Google Doc and Sheets to collaborate and organize their trips.
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1. POIs
Goal: As a planner researching a destination, reading several articles, blogs, travel sites, I want to document the places I'm interested in going to easily.
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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.
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.
creating something tangible to test
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FEEDBACK FROM TESTING
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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.
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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 sites like 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 amount of effort?
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generating ideas quickly on paper
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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.
prepping wireframes for initial tests
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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.
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We decided to park personalization and focus solely on creating a robust planner travelers could use to organize and collaborate with others.
After reviewing the historical data, we decided to move forward with 3 main user goals.
diving into wireFLOWS
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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.
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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 to further iterate
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:
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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.
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HIGH FIDELITY
01
BRANDING
02
MOCKS
03
TESTING
Journey to POC
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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
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The main issues we wanted to address from our low-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 & incremental development
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.
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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.
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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.
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 was to lay the foundation, collect qualitative data, and lead the team to a proof of concept to iterate further.
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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 in this case and positively impacted how the team approached our design review discussions.
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