The Team
Sam Biggs
Team Lead
Chue Vang
UX / UI Designer
Khadeem Demming
UX Designer
AdvaTravel is an app that can assist in the process of planning a trip with friends and family. The app does this by suggesting trip location and informing the user about activities and events and users can quickly and easily add everything about their trip to their itinerary. They can share this itinerary to their friends and family who can help collaborate.
• To expand knowledge of advance prototyping.
• To demonstrate proficiency with Figma
• Apply Figma knowledge and skills to a self-directed project.
We use the Lean UX method that was taught to us through the book Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams by Jeff Gothelfand Josh Seiden. The Lean UX method is based on assumptions. Assumptions are astatement of something we think is true. They are designed to generate common understandingaround an idea.MVP is a core concept in Lean UX. MVP stands for MinimumViable Product and the idea is to build the most basic concept and test it to seeif there is value for a product. User Research and Testing the MVP is a corepart to the Lean UX method to produceThe project Pitch was conducted August 30th, Westarted the project Oct 4th and ended Nov 21st. theproject was conducted over 2 3 weeklong sprints. In total the project took 8weeks to complete.
•Create a problem statement
•Create Proto-persona
•Prioritize Product Back Log
“The current state of the [Traveling Apps] has focused primarily on [Itinerary, recommendations, Sharing with friends, and Luxury traveling (only recommending expensive places to travel)]. What existing products/services fail to address is [Recommend all traveling locations, Ability to share ALL information, Guidance on where to travel and how to travel]. Our product/service will address this gap by [An app that recommends traveling locations based on filters for prices, locations, and appeal. And to help organize traveling with groups with an itinerary ]. Our initial focus will be [Traveling recommendations and Itinerary].
Using the assumptions, we started to break down our Product Backlog which consists of features that we assume the proto personas would need to reach their goals.
Looking at our assumptions is when we decided that the app will need two features, a recommendation feature, and an itinerary feature.
Using our assumptions about potential users we made some proto personas to look to when seeing if a user would need a feature.For our first time making proto personas for our app, we made 3. Brenda who is a mom of 2 kids, Alex and Joe who are a newly wed couple how travel often, and Stacy who is 22 years old and is planning a large girls trip.
This week is when we began splitting up the work.
We had three things that needed to get done:
1. Our team ran into some issues with our original assumptions as it was to complex, and we needed to go back and adjust our product backlog to align more with the MVP method.
2. Began interviewing to better understand our user base and to test concepts and use of features.
3. Began wireframing on the recommendation feature.
The first thing my team needed to work on for this week was fixing our product backlog.
We originally had a large app idea to help with planning a trip from booking their hotels and flight, giving recommendations for trips, and having a day planner. We broke down the features we need to 2features, a recommendation feature and a itinerary feature.
We then broke down what each of those features will need into a mindmap.
One of my roles was moderating for interviews.
For our interviews we wanted to get a better understanding of our users and what they need. So, We asked the interviewees questions surrounding their trips and their process when planning a trip:
Can you tell me a little about yourself? Do you travel often? Who do you travel with? When going on a trip, how do you go about planning? What do you find helpful when planning a trip? What do you find most difficult about traveling? What do you wish an app would help with in planning a trip? Do you currently use any traveling app to help you plan your trips/vacation? If yes, what do you find most difficult or easy? What are some important features you look for in a travel app? How important is images and details to you? Do you usually travel alone or accompanied by others? How organize are you when it comes to planning a trip?
Information that Users were looking for is suggestions for: Places to stay, Activities and Restaurants, Knowing All Fees, Pricing,Rules, Special events
For our wireframe we focus on the recommendation feature and what information is needed for the page. This task was taken overby my teammate Chue.
·This week we focused on the prototyping the recommendation feature and proving the need for a recommendation feature.
For this week of interviewing, we gave our interviewees a scenario and watched what they would do to complete the scenario: “You and your friend or boyfriend want to go ona weekend getaway what is the first thing you do? You have a budget of $300dollars split between the two of you. You don’t want to travel more than 4hrs and you will be traveling between Nov 19-21."
Our first interview went well, and we learned that during the research process can be quite tedious as the interviewee opened up to 20 tabs to do research on the area and to save places she really liked.
Our second interview when we gave her a small budget,she immediately went for her old trip plans so we expanded her budget and distance and she went into the same process as the first interviewee did by opening up a lot of tabs to do research.
Key Take aways:
for this group of interviews were that users need: An easy way to store and view activities.o A way to discuss and vote on activities.o A better way to view reviews based on images credibility and grouping.
We also began our Prototyping for our recommendationpage.
This week we revaluated our Problem statements,Product backlog, and Proto personas. After our interviews we had a better idea of what we needed for the app and how we were going to accomplish those goals. We wanted to focus more on the recommendations features and the ability to save trip ideas into the itineraries. We also adjusted our Proto Person to fit more to our demographic of someone in their 20s and plans trips often with a big group of friends.
This sprint we had a lot of work to do.
1. Adjust the Recommendation Prototype.
2. Create wireframe for itinerary features.
3. Add real details for Prototype and wireframe.
4. Learn more about what is needed in an itinerary feature for planning a trip.
Our team broke up these tasks among ourselves:
I worked on adjusting the Prototype and conducting user research on the itinerary feature.
Chue worked on the wireframe.
Khadeem worked on finding real details for the prototype and wireframe.
For this weeks interviews since we were focused on the Itinerary feature we asked our interviewees to show us their note taking process by giving them a scenario “You and 5 other people of your choosing want to go on a trip to Florida. You were picked to plan out this trip for everyone and your goal is to be able to send everyone an itinerary for this trip. What do you do?”·
This Scenario focused more on taking notes for other members in the group to use.
We also asked if they could share some of their notes from past trips.
After these interviews our original assumptions about users wanting a day planner was very wrong.
We found that most users don’t like to plan out their entire day but would rather have notes about what they want to do, what they need, what activities are available for them to do
Our key findings were The younger age groups like to use the notes app that comes with their phone and share that information with their friends. Everyone that we interview except for lori who prefers to use a bulleted list. this might be for ease of use or for ease to quickly glace at.
This week was use to work on the Prototype.
We wanted all the information in the Prototype to be correct and current. We also wanted everything to be linked and clickable.
We also conducted user testing. Here were our first reviews:
More photos in the app.
Change to bookmark position.
The notes were a little more organized.
More details for the details of each location.
For big groups, multiple checkbox for each person.
In the "Recommendation" section of th eapp, specifically on the Disney World section, add the different parks within Disney to provide option to pick from.
A list of schedule on the Detail page.
A way to help with navigating within a theme park and show how long a ride is so she can explore other places.
Adding an interactive map would be cool to have.
Ability to see places close by the current location she is at and explore in the Details page.
A little less confusing on the reviews section.
The ability to save trips to a list maybe a "Look at later" list.
The ability to look at a profile.
Would really like to see some hotel and restaurant details.
Location should be at the top.
Would like to have better price range.
Add more options to the filter.
Broader questions maybe a quiz?
Add more details to detail page
Have cards to add to the trip like the ones we have in the my trips.
Would like more information on prices and auto calculate expenses would be helpful.
Be able to visualize extra options.
Calendar would be useful. Doesn't like the idea to manually add their own
We took all of these reviews to adjust our prototypefor the rest of the sprint and for the following week.
Working on AdvaTravel has taught me a lot about Lean UX, MVP and about being a team leader. Lean UX was a harder concept to pick up than I original thought. The process of using assumptions and creating an MVP instead of doing research is much different. The project has also allow me to become more confident in my assumption and myself.
This project help me build new skill with figma's new advance tools with variables and conditionals.
As someone who started in computer science I was thrilled to work with the variables and conditionals and now all my future designs.
The Lessons I learned from this project will be beneficial for all my future design endeavors.
