Roadie Rendezvous - Road Tripping Assistant
Responsive website for a road trip planning and budgeting website that helps users plan trips collaboratively.
My Role
User Research, Persona, User Flows, Task Flows, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Branding, and UI Design
UX Designer
Team
Individual Project
Timeline
June - July 2023
Problem Statement
Road trips often have many time-sensitive destinations and reservations that are hard to keep track of. Time management and good organization can be very helpful with this type of travel and falling off the rails can ruin your plans for part of your scheduled travel plans, costing you time and potentially lost funds.
During long, multi-stop road trips, travelers have a hard time organizing and keeping track of hotel and campsite bookings, museum reservations, booked shows, and etc. throughout the trip, as they have to bounce in between different websites, emails and print out their own schedule to make sure they keep everything on track and per schedule.
Project Goals
Help travelers that are collaboratively planning their road trip with a group easily plan the trip while accommodating everyone’s goals and opinions.
Help travelers that want to keep track of all of their travel information in a simple way keep track of every reservation and timeline as they are traveling.
Help road trippers that want to vacation in a way that maximizes their budget find the most cost-effective options for their travels.
Project Process
Getting to Know the User
Data Analysis
Starting the Design
User Testing
Refining Design
Final Results
Getting to Know the User
A big part of starting to understand what the users really need in a road tripping app was starting the research process and getting inside the user’s minds and needs to make sure that what was being designed was what they truly needed.
Research Goals & Objectives
The scope and focus of this project is to create a road trip planning and organizing application for travelers planning a road trip within the United States. Before we start designing, we had to establish our research goals.
Research and understand user's approach to planning their road trips and what tools they currently use to plan them
Provide users with an easy to navigate page that allows them to organize all of their travel information in one place
Understand key features needed in the website to provide a seamless way to organize their information
Personas
Data Analysis
After gathering all of the data from research, interviews & surveys, all of the data was compiled into the main pain points that users faced while using social fitness apps and were used while conducting competitor analyses.
Interview & Survey Findings
The scope and focus of this project is to create a road trip planning and organizing application for travelers planning a road trip within the United States. Before we start designing, we had to establish our research goals.
Different Planning Styles Affect Planning
Users that like planning ahead of time, an all-in-one app solution sounds appealing, but if the user does not particularly like planning in advance, an app that allows them to book only what they have to and then book everything else last minute, along their route, is more appealing.
Budget! Budget! Budget!
Users express that tracking the budget of group expenses would be a good feature to have. And that it would also be nice if a website could show you cheaper options and ways to travel as you are planning, especially if you have flexible dates.
Live, Editable Travel Itinerary
Users expressed that having an app serve as a live, daily itinerary, kind of like a wedding planner, would be convenient.
Collaboration Tool for Planning with Others
When planning with a group, a live collaboration feature is useful.
User Pain Points
Pain Point 01
Group Road Trip Planning Usually Falls on One Person
Pain Point 02
Creating and then Keeping Track of Your Budget is Hard & Can be Frustrating
Pain Point 03
Keeping Track of all the Bookings is Messy
Competitor Analysis
How Might We Questions
Once all of the data was looked at and the users needs were realized, three “How might we…” questions emerged to help address the problems that we needed to design for.
Help travelers that are collaboratively planning their road trip with a group easily plan the trip while accommodating everyone’s goals and opinions?
How might we…
Help travelers that want to keep track of all of their travel information in a simple way keep track of every reservation and timeline as they are traveling?
How might we…
Help road trippers that want to vacation in a way that maximizes their budget find the most cost-effective options for their travels?
How might we…
Starting the Design
After gathering all of the research and studying competitors, I started off the design process with creating a site structure using Sitemaps & Design Flows. Once the basic structure of the site was established, I threw myself into designing and created my first high-fidelity prototype.
Feature Roadmap
Before diving into the site structure, I established that features that were most important to achieve the project goals.
Sitemap
User Flows
Collaborate with Others to Plan Trip
Collaborate on Road Trip Budget
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Mobile Wireframes
Homepage
Starting Trip
Itinerary
Add Tripmates
Add Budget
Desktop Wireframes
Homepage
Starting Trip
Add Budget
Initial High-Fidelity Prototype
Starting a Trip
Add Collaborators
Add Budget
Addressing User Problems
Collaboration with Tripmates
The collaborative feature allows for everyone to contribute to the planning process, so the planning does not fall onto the shoulders of one person alone. It makes sure that everyone can have input with the trip stops & decisions, helping make the trip successful for everyone that is involved!
Budget that Checks with Your Bookings
The budget feature allows you to set your financial goals & limitations for the trip and lets you know if your bookings exceed your budget, so you can make a decision to adjust your budget or adjust your travel accordingly.
User Testing
Usability testing was used to test the efficacy of the design and what improvements need to be made to increase the quality of the user experience and address user pain points. The usability testing showed that many of the participants were fond of the idea behind the website and just needed clarification in certain areas.
Usability Study Parameters
Study
Moderated Usability Study
Location
Seattle, WA & Remote Testing
Participants
3 Participants
Length
Avg.10 min.
Usability Test Key Takeaways
The usability studies conducted resulted in all 3 participants completing all tasks without incident and the biggest change to the website has been organization of a few listed items on the website.
Add “My Current Trips” to the “New Trip” Page
2/3 users suggested that the “New Trip” page “Explore Things Along the Way” should be moved to the itinerary page and something different should be put in its place.
Refining Design
Usability Testing was extremely useful and eye-opening. Through the commentary and testing of the users, I was able to make overall improvements to the website, as well as make useful tweaks to specific parts of the task flows.
Design Developments
Move “Explore Things Along the Way” Section
“Other Trips You are Planning ” Section Added
Style Guide
Responsive Designs
Homepage
Itinerary Page
Budget Page
Final Results
Sign In & Start Trip
Add Collaborators
Add Budget
Lessons Learned
I learned that user feedback has been an undeniably big part of making this app grow into a functionally successful design that users actually want to use for their travel purposes. Their intuition and input are so helpful and should never be skipped during the research process.
Next Steps
A travel application like this has a lot of different features and additions that you could further develop from the ones that have been worked on so far.
Customized Trip Settings & Profile Information
In order to further serve the user’s needs, it would be beneficial if they were able to add personal information, like vehicle type, home base, etc. in order to help them achieve more accurate budgeting numbers and allow them to set certain preferences for planning.
Group-Collaborated Budget
In addition to your personal budget, it would be nice to develop a “Group Budget” page where everyone could collaborate and work together to set group financial goals that everyone is okay with.
Wow! Thanks for making it until the end!
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