Sejeong Gwon

Mobile-First

Design System

Branding

Travel Management

Roles

UX Researcher

UI & UX Designer

Tools Used

Figma

FigJam

Google Forms

Optimal workshop

Maze

Time line

8 Weeks

Overview

As I am a professional traveler with the experience of working as a flight attendant in my previous job, The word ‘travel’ has always been at the top of my mind. I had an opportunity to meet diverse travelers with different needs through my work experience and was able to empathize with their challenges from preparation to proceeding with their travel journey.
In this regard, this project initiated to bring practical digital solutions as a product designer by utilizing my previous experience.

Product

Optimizing travel itinerary based on traveler's preferences

Travelist is a custom-tailored travel mobile service that helps travelers find their best-fit travel items and create an optimized travel itinerary by providing a user-friendly travel personality quiz.

Background

Increasing global travel creates demand for optimal travel mobile app services for international trip planning.

Global air travel continued its recovery from the pandemic, passenger traffic reached 75 percent of pre-pandemic levels as people rushed back to travel following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, airlines expect to turn a profit of $4.7billion in 2023, and 96% of people expect traveling abroad after the pandemic, data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) . In addition, along with this phenomenon, expectations for overseas travel are becoming more diverse and expanding among travelers.

Problem

Travelers are faced with the difficulties associated with deciding where to go and how to make the necessary plans.

While the prospect of an international adventure can be exciting, These difficulties may come in the form of researching landmarks to visit, hotels to stay, restaurants to dine at, as well as the best time to do all the aforementioned. In line with the changed travel culture of the post-COVID-19 era, it is urgent to develop a new concept travel mobile app.

 32, Media Director,GA, USA

“Burden of preparing for numerous travel documents was a reason that I could not go travel abroad”

35, Mother, South Africa

“I want to have an itinerary planned for me based on location”

31, Data scientist, VA, USA

"I already get so stressed out when deciding where to travel"

Key Quotes from User Interviews

Research

Identify travelers' key motivations, goals and difficulties when planning the international travel.

I conducted the user interview with 8 participants with the unmoderated 1:1 and user survey through a Google online survey form targeting 19 participants living in the metropolitan area and suburbs. The survey was conducted over 4 days and requested about 5-10min. Respondents were mainly asked about their planning the travel motivation, goals, and difficulties through questionnaires.

Motivations

1 %

To explore something new

Goals

1 %

Mobile-First Approach

Difficulties

1 %

Meet Travel budget

Difficulties

1 %

Missing Information

Research Key findings

What are the pain points?

Pain point

Time Consuming

Searching and comparing travel items is time-consuming.

Pain point

Too Many Options

Choosing destinations is a burden, especially when there are too many options.  

Needs & wants

Optimize My Travel Journey

Travelers favor optimizing and personalizing their travel itinerary based on their preferences. 

Needs & wants

One Page View

Travelers want a short summary of their travel information so they can review it at a glance.

Competitive analysis

Understanding competitors to find a niche for my product.

I conducted a competitive analysis with 2 direct, 2 indirect competitor.  This process helped me understand how other competitors position themselves and enable me to find a niche for my product.

Wanderlog
Direct
Google Maps
Indirect
Tripadvisor
Direct
Triplit
Indirect

Key Findings & Opportunities

Competitors offer customized travel suggestions, but lack tools to simplify the traveler's decision-making.

Streamline the decision making process

By presenting curated choices, the app simplifies the decision-making process, making it easier for travelers to plan their trips efficiently.

Use case 1

User Friendly- Travel Personality Quiz

Users take a quiz with 5 different categories: where, when, who, what, weather, and discover their travel personality.

use case 2

Create Itinerary

Users can browse travel items on the map according to the filtered recommendations based on the quiz results.

Use case 3

Customize Your Travel Items

Users can customize travel itineraries by replacing the travel items on the daily page. The daily page is a visual overview of all the locations they can visit throughout the day, marked by time stamps.

Usability testing

Test, Evaluate, Iterate

To evaluate my design, six participants conducted a usability test on both the maze test and moderated test methods. Participants were given three tasks and asked usability scale questions regarding learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction.

Usability testing key finding 1

“I like the airplane-shaped progress bar!”

4 out of 7 users praised the airline-shaped progress bar, stating that it enhances the immersive experience of the quiz process by providing visual cues for progress tracking during lengthy tasks.

Usability testing key finding 2

“When did I start a quiz?”

To clarify the ‘Quiz’ section’s starting point, I added login notifications and rearranged the ‘skip’ button to emphasize the ‘take a quiz’ CTA.

Usability testing key finding 3

“The replacement icon is confusing”

3 out of 7 users commented the icon of ‘replacement’ is vague to understand at a glance, so I decided to add ‘text’ and the icon together.

Design Process

Discover the most effective and user-centric design decisions by prioritizing content with usability, functionality, and user behaviors in mind.

Design

User & Task Flows

I created 3 main task flows by determining the happy path for the users within my product. It helped me find the areas where my product needs improvement to complete given tasks seamlessly among users.

User Flow
Task Flows

Design

Wireframe

Based on 3 main user task flows, I created a low-fidelity wireframes first. then I added some flows to connect the flows more seamlessly. After determining the best user flow experience within low-fidelity, I moved to creating mid-fidelity wireframes.

Design

Prototyping by using the variants in Figma

Based on the high-fidelity design for the mobile app, I created a prototype by using the Figma tool. Also utilizing the ‘variant’ feature in Figma helped me work more time efficiently. Also, I was able to understand how users interact with the mobile app and identified areas for improvement to enhance better usability of my product.

Prototyping

UI kit & Branding

Enjoyable, Adventure, delightful, Energetic and Motivational.

I wanted to deliver an inspiring, delightful, and energetic brand image through my product. To bring that, I used blue and green colors for the primary colors, playful typography style, and a simple and sleek icon design.

Travelist UI Library Kit

Design System

Travelist Design system

I decided to create the basic design system for travelist mobile app. It has 7 categories Grid, Typography, colors, buttons, icons, controls, and components. It helped how to organize reusable design components within designs and how improve design systems for better communication across teams in the near future.

Travelist Design Systeem

Final Design

Next steps & Takeaways

What did I learn?

1. Exploring a Diverse Research Process

This project provided me with a comprehensive understanding of various research methodologies and their application throughout different stages. During the ideation phase, I utilized a methodology called “feature matrix” to prioritize and implement user-aligned features, resulting in effective targeting of my product’s audience. Moving forward, I aim to incorporate data-driven research processes to inform and shape design decisions, enabling me to evaluate my designs independently with supporting data.

2.Embracing Continuous Improvement and Feedback

In the week of 10, we had a significant project pivot following the change in demand for the target users for our product. Given time constraints, we had to quickly adapt to the scope of work and readjust to our design work. However, this experience taught me that working with clients in the real world is about tackling unexpected situations and solving those problems under given constraints.

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