In the last several days around this July in 2023, I have been looking for destinations for a holiday with my friends to Thailand after seeing some videos on TikTok that showed us beautiful locations in the Pak Chong area. We gathered the cheap places and shared the links to the destinations on our Whatsapp chat until one of us sent a bulk destination from an OTA app.

After I saw that product, which can be used by many users, I decided to explore another direct competitor to gather the required information and also conduct a qualitative interview to understand the user more.

As we know, Tiket.com is one of the OTA apps that most travelers in Indonesia use, so I think this can help the user to create their itinerary and have their trip stay on budget.

Absolutely, I wanted to know that not only me and my close friends that facing this situation and problem, so I did qualitative research by interviewing more of the users by asking about their behavior, what did they while arranging their trip, what their pain points, and absolutely what they need, so below is the detail.

The problem I was trying to solve will allow users to save their travel plans. By firstly based on my assumption, this problem can be faced by other users so I want to validate my assumption and create a feature that would help users to easily access and create their itinerary.

I gathered the information from the users who at least arranged their trip for a group of travelers once to the users who have experience in arranging a group trip by interviewing them because this can be a plus point since I wanted to know how the first-timer arranging a group trip compared to the experienced user who arranging their trip as well.

To ensure a user-centric approach, capturing the core needs and motivations of potential users, user stories were utilized. User stories provide a concise and actionable description of a specific user's goal and the value it brings. The user stories created for TripList are:

As a frequent traveler, I need a single app to easily plan and modify trips with multiple destinations and attractions so that the app can show prices, and available dates, and allow me to save selections to a trip list. It should also display the total cost of my trip and allow me to split payments with my travel companions.

As a traveler, when planning a group trip, I want to be able to easily compile a list of multiple destinations and attractions, view prices and available dates, and split payments with my travel companions, all within a single app, so that I can efficiently plan and organize my trip with ease and convenience.

Planning a trip can be stressful and overwhelming, especially when scheduling it all alone.

It can be challenging to keep track of all the details of a trip, so the users also would like to have a structured schedule when they can compile their trips.

The user understands that they can choose an attraction but they cannot select the type of product (room type, attraction type, etc.).

They also hope that they can make a transaction directly after seeing their saved list.

Payment options with the split bill.

To analyze the observations from the research, I use Affinity Mapping for each group based on the similarity found, by using this Affinity Mapping, I aim to understand users' patterns from the insights

After gathering and analyzing the interview results, I compiled them on a persona to summarize and easily understand the user.

To understand the user experience, and identify pain points and opportunities for improvement, I create a User Journey Map. The user journey map outlines the user's interactions with the current situation, at various stages of their travel planning process. It helps visualize the user's emotions, needs, and touchpoints with the app, allowing for a holistic view of their experience.

Based on the user story and benchmarking analysis, the proposed features for Triplist include:

The ability to efficiently plan and modify trips with multiple destinations and attractions.

Display prices and available dates, while allowing users to save selections to a trip list.

A structured schedule that can be compiled for trips.

The ability to select the type of product (room type, attraction type, etc.).

Direct transaction capability after viewing the saved list.

Payment options with split billing.

Triplist aims to differentiate itself from competitors by inspiring users to have a clearly scheduled trip with the selected details and personalized offers and recommendations for places near the user's selected destination.

After I did the interview and understood the user, I did an ideating session with help from AI which I used ChatGPT, Bard, & also BingAI. By using these three AIs I have more data and information to discuss and have suggestions for how this product will have its purpose to help the potential user finish their tasks.

Use the multiple-destination feature to easily plan a trip with friends or family. You can select different attractions or locations and add them to your itinerary, making it easy to keep track of everything in one place.

Take advantage of the ability to save selections to a trip list. This feature allows you to look at different options and save them for later, making it easy to compare prices and dates.

Use the structured schedule feature to plan out your trip ahead of time. This feature allows you to compile a detailed plan for each day of your trip, making it easy to stay organized and on track.

Try out the ability to select the type of product (room type, attraction type, etc.). This feature allows you to customize your trip based on your preferences and needs.

Use the direct transaction capability to book your trip quickly and easily. This feature allows you to make a purchase directly from your saved list, without having to navigate back to the main page.

Take advantage of the split billing feature to make payments with your travel companions. This feature makes it easy to split costs and keep track of who owes what.

The ability to select the type of product may limit the number of options available, as not all attractions or hotels may offer different room types or amenities.

The direct transaction capability may not allow for the best price comparison, as users may not have the ability to compare prices across different websites or platforms.

The split billing feature may be difficult to implement and may require additional fees or third-party tools to manage.

The structured schedule feature may limit users who prefer a more flexible travel itinerary, as it requires users to plan out their trip ahead of time.

Based on the brainstorming session with the AIs, I received several suggestions and trade-offs because I understand that not all the ideas from our brainstorming should be implemented since we only focused based from the user persona, so I compiled it into the priority matrix to help me design the Triplist based on the user needs.

I realized that Tiket.com doesn’t have any similar features yet, so I decided to have a comparison as a competitive analyst of Tiket.com’s direct competitors such as Traveloka, Airbnb, Booking.com, Pegipegi, Trip Advisor, and also to understand the design pattern through Tiket.com’s direct competitors.

Then I got the information and gathered it into a feature table below:

Based on the information that was gathered above, I made a problem statement framework by asking “How Might We?” and sorting it based on priority.

How might we simplify the process of coordinating and booking multiple attractions for group travelers?

How might we enhance budget management and expense tracking for group travelers to ensure fair cost-sharing?

How might we improve communication and collaboration among group travelers during the trip-planning phase?

How might we streamline the booking experience for various travel components, such as flights, accommodations, and attractions, within a single platform?

How might we leverage technology to offer real-time updates and notifications to keep travelers informed and engaged throughout their journey?

How might we design a user-friendly interface catering to experienced trip planners and novice travelers?

How might we integrate features that encourage users to explore unique and offbeat attractions at their chosen destinations?

How might we ensure that our platform adapts to the evolving needs and preferences of travelers in a rapidly changing travel landscape?"

I realized that I could not put all of those solutions at this time, so I decided to only choose several solutions, especially from the high-priority HMW that I’ve got above.

After getting the solution, I crafted and knitted all of those into a User Flow to provide a good UX for the users.

Learning and looking for ideas from exploration, “mix and match” of layouts to find which explorations are suited better for the users.

In the first images above, I created a new “save” CTA to help users save their preferred attractions.

There are two types of saving methods for each attraction which are:

Save directly When the users didn’t want to fill in their details at the times in case to compare the prices or only just wanted to give a suggestion to their friends by saving the attractions only from the product list.

Save with selected product When the users want to save an attraction to the Triplist, they can also add it through the attraction details page.

At these flows for the flight, the users that wanted to be selected must have a complete profile for their Tiket.com account, but this can also filled by the Trip Owner and help the process seamlessly.

The owner of the triplist can also directly share the bills with the members after they save an attraction, and also can send it after selecting multiple attractions on the saved triplist screen.

Since this Triplist is created to solve users’ pain points who are overwhelmed when organizing trips with their friends or family, especially when they want to book and pay for the trip, here, the trip owner can select the users that want to pay their booking, with this method, all of the users are not required to transfer to the other user only to make a payment. Based on the interview, almost all of the users are worried about the time when their friends are going to pay their money if they lend for the payment.

The payment session can fall into a cancellation, this is one of the trade-offs that can help the users based on the brainstorming for the possibilities;

Based on the information above, option number 1 is the choice by refunding all of the expenses from the bill is a better option, so the users need to re-assign their attraction once again, But to prevent this failure, I also created an alternative for the payment below.

To prevent the failure of the payment, there is a possibility that a user can’t pay or still not pay their billing, so for the alternative I provide a method to change the user that should pay with a condition; that the payment method is not selected yet until the payment time ends, this alternative can help the user be more flexible and to prevent the book cancellation rate going up significant because it can be more happened with the group that has more members and to the members who can’t pay theirs.

After the flows that have the key for this feature above, there are several flows that are also important for this Triplist, which are:

This Triplist aims to have users that can help collaborate for each user selecting and choosing the destination they want, the invitations make the users that are invited have an account for Tiket.com.

So this Triplist allows the Trip owner to invite another member as the contributor and viewer, which are:

Contributor Contributor can save any attraction to the Triplist, set the quantity, update the attraction and trip info, delete any attraction, also pay their bills that was issued by the Trip owner.

Viewer Viewers can only see the trip information, and attraction details, and pay their bills that was issued by the trip owner.

This trip timeline is provided to help the user remember their schedule and expect what should they do next, this timeline also only shows the attractions that already paid, to show clear information.

The main flow of the trip owner is to take care of the trip, organize the timeline and the attractions, and also help the trip to become successful.

This case study is pretty overwhelming and I am proud also sure that this case study can be better after doing the Testing, now I am in the process of the upcoming testing session with around 10 users using https://maze.co