📝 Project Overview
The Problem
For most people, it takes a whole lot to plan a trip. It feels like a whole lot getting the right flight and the perfect hotel room to stay during their trip.
For most people, getting an agent to do this means them not getting to personally enjoy the thrills of looking through multiple options and making their decision.
Meanwhile, for others, it’s a thing of not having enough money to pay agents to do these for them while having to still cough out money for their trip.
Going on a trip, whether for business or pleasure, requires a substantial amount of money. Why subject people to paying through their noses to also find the right hotels and flights as well?
The Solution
I’m proposing to build an application where people can easily book their flights as well as hotel rooms. They can also get ratings based on where previous users have booked and the experiences and services they got.
👨🏾💻 My Role
📢 This is a solo project. I performed the research, Ideated solutions, crafted the design, did the interactions as well as the mockups.
With the project idea spelt out, let’s jump into how and what research method I used
🤝 My process and content
Scope
Phases Involved
User Research to understand the needs of the target users and their expectations when using the planning application
Analysis - Create affinity maps to uncover the pain points of our target users
Ideation - Define the focus of the design and come up with solutions. Sketch ideas and wireframes to test these ideas
Prototype - UI design and simulation (like a real life version of the app).
User Testing and Validation
This process is not set in stone. Design processes are always flexible and are usually modified to fit the requirements of each design project. In addition, steps like testing and iterations may occur frequently until the design meets user needs and industry standard.
✍🏽 Let’s dive in
📖 User research
Travelry is a flight and hotel booking application, based on ratings, price range and proximity. This app seeks to reduce the stress people go through when planning trips, either for business or vacations.
I curated a list of questions for a survey to help easily understand what the users want to use the product for, what other products in the market are doing right and what they are doing wrong.
<aside>🗣️ Research Questions
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What is your gender?
How old are you?
Have you ever travelled either within or outside Nigeria by air?
How did you book your flight and hotel ?
Did you use a product to solve this problem?
If yes, what is the name of the product you used?
What about this product did you like the most?
What about this product did you dislike the most?
How long did it take you to book your flight and your hotel room?
Are you willing to pay for a product that helps you solve this problem?
<aside>🧐 Insights from interviews
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👥 User personas
User personas help me to put a summary of my target user’s needs, goals, pain points and other information into one place to help me focus on which problems need to be solved and goals that need to be met. It will basically guide my ideation process.
Persona:
The empathy stage enabled me to identify my target users as well as their needs and the research I did has helped me come up with insights on how to find solutions to match said wants and needs.
💡 Moving on to the conceptualization stage
In this phase, I brainstormed and came up with ideas for creating matching solutions to my user pain points. The ultimate focus of this phase is quality and not the quantity of ideas.
📋 User story
To kickstart the design, I created UX stories to illustrate how the users would navigate the Travelry app. This enabled me to draft the user flow and ensure that the screens designed would address user needs.
Onboarding (sign up)*
As a user, I want to be able to:
Type in my full name so I can register my account
Type in my email address so I can register my account
Enter my phone number
Type in my preferred password so I can secure my account
Sign in if I already have an account
Read the terms of service and privacy policy before I sign up
Onboarding (Sign in)*
As a user, I want to be able to
Type in my email address to sign in
Type in my password to sign in
check if I typed the correct password
Go back to the sign up page
Home screen*
As a user, I want to be able to:
get reminders of my fight and hotel bookings
Book a new flight
book a hotel
view different hotels and lodgings
View different flight offers
Check my notifications
Access the blog page
access my profile
See a list of quick actions
Bookings page*
As a user, I want to be able to:
View all the bookings i've made
See the details of each booking
Cancel the appointment if i want to
Access my home page
view completed bookings as well as upcoming
Book a flight/hotel
Blog page*
As a user i want to:
view different articles
View the dates of each article
Profile page
As a user, i want to:
Input my personal details
Add my payment details
Access coupons
View reviews i've given
View saved offers
🏄🏾♂️ Userflow
The conceptualization stage was quite interesting because there were so many ways that I could have approached it, however, observing similar applications and how their contents were structured guided me on how to narrow down my process and come up with these flows
🎨 Design
After coming up with solutions to the problems I defined, I then proceeded to translating the said solutions into designs.
First, I came up with some paper sketches:
Then, I created the style guide and the High fidelity designs in figma:
🤝 Conclusion
The aim of this research was to create a platform where users can an application where people can easily book their flights as well as hotel rooms. I also added car and aprtment rentals as well as a blog section
Lessons learnt:
This project has helped me dive deeper into user research processes and design thinking.
It also help expand my views on the different ways of achieving a particular goal using different research processes.
I also learnt that certain research and design processes are tailored for achieving some specific goals
