MS - UX & Information Systems
LineUp - An iOS travel app design with a new point of view
Responsibilities:
UX designer and Researcher
Project Duration:
October 2022 - December 2022
The Product:
LineUp is an app for travelers that displays all feasible commutes and recommends a preferred commute between the source and the destination. Give customers the opportunity to reserve activities in advance based on their location and the time of year, and maintain a checklist of necessities.
The Problem
1. Best commute to take while traveling is unfamiliar to a newcomer in each place unless they do a web search.
2. Most people lack knowledge about things to do, and
3. Some travelers stress constantly about packing all of their belongings and necessary documentation while travelling.
Design Thinking Process
I completed my project iterating on these 5 steps (Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test) of the design thinking process to understand and solve problems from a user's perspective.
Understanding The User
User Research: Summary
I talked with almost 10 people to gain as much insight as I could. In my research, the frequent open-ended questions I asked were
1. Can you tell me about your experience while booking your trip?
2. How do you select the commute for your trip?
3. Will you select the best-suggested commute or your most convenient commute?
4. What is the most frustrating part about traveling?
5. How do you keep track of all the things you need for your trip?
6. How do you search for outdoor activities?
7. How do you book outdoor activities? Would you go someplace because of activity?
Empathy Mapping
After conducting several interviews with the users, I created an empathy map to understand the user's attitudes and behavior, which helped me to understand what they felt and what could be improved.
User Survey
To move further with the findings and to find out what most users' opinions are and to make sure I am going in the correct direction, I conducted a survey of 36 people, and the results are as follows:
User Research Summary: Pain Points
Finding 4:
Checklist
Finding 2:
Activity Booking
Finding 3:
Places Suggestion
Finding 1:
Commute Suggestion
Google doesn't offer any recommended commuting options, and you are unaware of all your options.
People realize there are no activities available once they arrive , popular activities require reservation
We rely on Google to find local attractions, but sometimes the internet is down, and we end up wasting time.
While traveling, there is always a fear of forgetting important items.
Quantitative Findings
Almost half (48%) of activity/tour/experience bookings happen while travelers are at their destination.
Google/Greenberg, 2018
89% of millennials plan travel activities based on content posted online by their peers
Entrepreneur, 2017
38% of tour and activity bookings happen up to two days before the day of the activity.
Phocuswright, 2019
Personas
Joy, Student
Joy is an adventurous student pursuing a master's degree. He often goes on a hike, exploring new places during the weekends, but as he is new to the city, he doesn’t know what the suggested commute is to travel or what activity can be done at that place.
Anne, Business Intelligence
Anne is a working professional; she often travels on business trips. She is an impatient woman, so she always has something to worry about and forgets something while traveling.
Alexa, Vlogger
Alexa is a part-time travel vlogger; she often tries to vlog wherever she goes. But, as she is often busy with personal or professional work, she sometimes forgets to schedule activities to do on time.
Competitive Audit
I also conducted a competitive analysis to identify and understand the current product gap. The following table demonstrates that.
LineUp
Starting The Design
Low Fidelity - Wireframe
This is version one of my low-fidelity wireframes. I kept this to have a look at how much I iterated to give a better user experience.
High Fidelity
After creating wireframes, I switched to Figma to create high fidelity as I was designing for the first time. I was constantly iterating on my prototype and the result was somewhat different from the wireframe.
Usability Study
I did an unmoderated usability study with five users and understood what could be done to make the user experience even better for each user. And then I created an affinity map to create them and prioritize them accordingly.
Based on the usability study test, the following patterns were identified:
1. It was observed that 2 out of 5 participants thought it would be better if the layout design was a little different. This means that the user wants an easy and modern user interface for the app.
2. It was observed that 3 out of 5 participants thought color contrast was quite low or not eye-catching. This means that the user wants high color contrast.
3. It was observed that 1 out of 5 participants needed all commute options to get to work. This means that in the future we can add all the commute booking screens.
Affinity Mapping
What Changed?
This was my first UX design project. Unfortunately, when I first conducted a usability test on my previous prototype, I did not receive any feedback about accessibility, and it was concluded that everything went well. After some time, I personally realized that design text is not easy to read on images, and color contrast is also not meeting the WCAG bar. To make it more accessible, I updated the whole app design and made the one change shown below:
Before
Accessibility issues were like
1. The color contrast does not meet the WCAG criteria.
2. The text on the image is difficult to read.
After
Accessibility issues are solved like
1. Complies with the WCAG AA and AAA requirements for large text.
2. Used a card to display information and contrast of 21:1 to make it easy to read
Final Product
After iterating on color and layout, the final product is as follows.
Takeaways
While designing this app, the most important thing I learned was how to narrow down the tons of information you collected in the research phase. Also, sometimes in usability tests, we might not get all the feedback, so we should not assume our design is great and move to the next step.