Toura: Trip Planning solution

Anushka Garg

UX Researcher

UX Designer

Product Designer

Figma

Problem background

Planning for a trip is an exhausting nightmare!

This year I decided to go on a solo trip to Japan. Coming from a family that loves taking at least one vacation per year, I was used to my father planning the whole trip with just internet as his assistant. I happily decided to execute this task myself this time.

The moment I typed “What to visit in Japan”, I was swamped with numerous links to articles, blogs, tour packages and much more. Still I didn’t give up and started to go through them. Reading the information dump, visiting the secondary links, deciding on what to visit and how to manage my schedule took me weeks which ended up with me getting exhausted and loosing the excitement. Hence, this led to the question -

Goals

HMW make it easy for users to discover popular attractions at their destination?

Users should be able to easily explore and discover popular attractions, landmarks, activities, and events at their chosen destination.

HMW empower users to create personalized itineraries tailored to their interests?

Users should be able to create customized itineraries based on their interests, preferences, and available time.

HMW facilitate collaboration among travel companions to plan the trip together?

Users should be able to easily collaborate with their travel companions, whether they are friends, family members, or colleagues, to plan and organize the trip together.

Solution

Exploring made easier

Discover New Attractions Like Never Before!

Swipe through featured attractions and captivating visuals. Info at a glance - get essential information and reviews about each attraction

Embrace a journey uniquely suited to you

Craft your ideal getaway with tailored suggestions and travel guides.

Discover and get recommendations for travel attractions that match your interests. View travel guides and articles to know about the local culture, do-don’ts and much more about your destination.

Effortless Itinerary Mastery with power of AI

Your travel history, present escapades, and future dreams, all at your fingertips.

Create organized itinerary for your new trip with the seamless efficiency of AI. Go Solo or add travel mates to your trip plans and collaborate with them. Set Budget for each member and Keep your hotel - flight reservation tickets at one place. Manage and view your past, present and future trip with ease.

The Process

The current challenge

I brainstormed the problems that one might encounter while planning a trip.

Takes too much time ⌛

Travelers spend significant amount of time and effort in searching for information about their destination, discovering attractions and creating their itinerary which leads to frustration.

Information Overload 😩

The abundance of sources makes it difficult for travelers to sift through them and find relevant, trustworthy and up-to-date information. This causes confusion and a feeling of uncertainty in travelers.

Lack of Local Knowledge 🎡

Travelers face challenges in understanding the local culture, customs, and logistics of their destination, especially if it's an unfamiliar territory. This can make it challenging to make informed decisions.

Messy Collaboration 🙍‍♀️🙍‍♂

Planning activities and creating an itinerary that aligns with the preferences and schedules of all travelers involved, especially in group trips, can become complex and very messy.

Understanding The user

The target audience consists of people who partake in leisure travel. They tend to either travel solo or with travel companions such as friends or family members.

These leisure trips are centered around relaxation, sightseeing, exploring, and having a good time. They are not bound by work or specific obligations and have the freedom to explore and experience new destinations at their own pace.

Some interesting points from the potential users -

👨‍👩‍👧‍

“We focus on including family or child friendly attractions when kids are involved.”

😔

“In my last trip, I wasn’t aware that all the attractions are closed on Mondays.”

📱

“I like to save reels for travel destinations that I like. It’s pretty how those travel bloggers film them.”

🤦‍♂️

" It becomes a very messy process when I have to decide on what places to visit and which day to go with my friends."

🫂

“I reach out to my relatives and close friends who have already visited the place when I am preparing my itinerary. It helps to have reviews that I can trust.”

🫤

“There is a lot confusion when I plan a trip. Last time, I organized my itinerary using an excel sheet lol. Felt pretty old school.”

Quantifying my interview data

I conducted an online survey where I got about 23 responses.

The questions were based on the travel type, preferred sources for panning trips, usage of digital tools, common issues faced and expectations.

Majority preferred ‘Self- Exploring on the internet and social media about their destination’ while creating itineraries.

‘Discovering new attractions’, ‘Creating and managing the travel itinerary’ and ‘Collaborating with the travel companions’ were the common challenging part of travel planning for most.

Synthesizing my Research

Time to open FigJam and make sense of the data I have!

Affinity Mapping

Categorizing the data to obtain insights

I segregated the information to identify the needs and frustration points of the users.

To understand the travel planning process in depth, I mapped out the steps taken by the users to form their itineraries, sources referred for travel information, travel habits and digital usage.

Meeting my Competitors

Yes-No-ing the features in the market

From the data obtained from user research, I touched upon 4 direct competitors to find out what features are currently working for the users and whether they are aligned to the expectations of the users obtained from the survey.

‘Discovering new attractions’, ‘Creating and managing the travel itinerary’ and ‘Collaborating with the travel companions’ were the common challenging part of travel planning for most.

Onwards to a Solution

Defining the design goals and structuring a solution.

Leveraging the key findings and persona attributes, I understood that the ideal solution should emulate the current behavior patterns of the users in accordance to their needs while reducing the space for frustration.

Visual

Using visual stimulation to make discovering popular attractions more fun. Modern, Intuitive and easy-to-navigation.

Comprehensive

Information about attractions like opening hours, photos and reviews to ensures users make informed decisions.

Efficient

Make trip planning effortless by providing tools to manage itineraries. Adding attractions and collaborating seamlessly.

Feature Prioritization

Using MoSCoW analysis to prioritize features based on the findings during research and competitive analysis.

Information Architecture

Before jumping into screen design, I defined the structure of how the users will navigate through the whole app to achieve their final objectives.

Visual Designing Begins!

Figma time to visualize and actualize the solution.

Exploration

Freehanding the Pre-Eliminary Wireframes

At the early stage of design, I created main user scenarios that outline the key task and actions to catch the necessary components and layout requirement.

Style Guide

Color Branding

Poppy Surprise #FF5733

The energetic quality of orange is relevant to travel as it can convey the excitement and anticipation associated with exploring new destinations.

Downriver #0A2753

The trustworthiness and professionalism associated with blue makes users feel confident and secure in their travel planning.

Typography

Aa

Montserrat

Regular Medium Semi-Bold Bold

Aa

Open Sans

Regular Medium Semi-Bold Bold

Components

Hi-Fi Design

Sign Up + Onboarding

Preference + Destination Selection

Home

Attraction Details

Add attraction to trip

Explored Featured Attractions

Travel Guides

Profile + Trips

Create New Trip

Trip Details + Itinerary

User Testing

5 participants, 6 testing scenarios

I conducted moderated user testing sessions remotely for 5 different users. I asked the participants to complete 6 scenarios and observed their movement patterns, mental models and ability to complete their goals.

App Onboarding

Let’s say you are registering on Toura for the first time.

Exploring an attraction

Let’s say you want to get more details about an attraction.

Creating a new trip

Let’s say you are creating a new trip to Japan.

Swiping featured attractions

Let’s try to explore the featured attractions.

Exploring and reading travel guides

Let’s explore and read the travel guides for your destination.

Exploring trip and itinerary creation

Let’s explore your created trip and create an automatic itinerary.

Key Findings

#1. Confusion in differentiating attraction and travel guide cards

#2. Too many steps to create a new Trip

4 out of 5 participants expected to be able to access the ‘create trip’ button from the home page itself. One participant tried to find ‘create trip’ option in the menu where you add an attraction to an already existing trip. Creating a trip from the profile section was not their first response.

Reflections

What I’d do differently next time.

Iterate as much as I can!

During designing the screens, I jumped straight to wireframing which limited my thought process to a extent. Next time I would explore the possibilities using sketches first and maybe some crazy 8 sessions.

Let curiosity flow instead of process!

In the beginning stages, I was obsessed with following the standard design process to try finding the right solution for my users that it took me around 4 times to actually “start” my project. From now on, I plan to rely more on my curiosity and insights to push me in the right direction.

Involve the users at every stage!

Due to time and resource limitations, I couldn’t collect data from more users. ‘Neilson Norman’ - 5 user rule - worked for me but the analysis wasn’t as diverse. Conducting more rounds of user testing was essential especially before the hi-fi design stage.

Future Steps

What’s next for Toura?

Work on the insights and improvements obtained from the user testing. Explore possibilities of implementing AI in other parts of Toura. Research with a more diverse spectrum of users. Rethink my problem statement and brainstorm the intricacies and problem spaces I might have missed. Test, test and test more.

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Posted Aug 10, 2024

A trip planning solution that helps users view popular attractions at their chosen destination, create itineraries and collaborate with traveling companions.

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