Xplr.io — Social Media by the Explorers for the Explorers
Road to the Idea
As a software engineer, my goal is to create something practical and useful that can touch and change the lives of as many people as possible for the better. Yet, the hardest part is sometimes answering just one question: what to create?
To answer that question I got to thinking deeply about my beliefs, interests and outlooks on the world and life as I see it today. I came up with a many problems within society including the rise homelessness and pyramid schemes, but was most intrigued by the lack of a Social Media platform made specifically for Travel.
Being a travel nerd and explorer as well as a photographer, I am often faced with the daunting task of figuring out the exact coordinates of a cool and unique location. After doing some unsuccessful research, I usually end up on Apple’s 3D maps scouting the general area acre by acre looking for that needle in a haystack. Yes, it’s rough… I was also fascinated when I realized that most people have never been to the most amazing locations in the Bay Area even though they have lived here their whole lives.
“As a software engineer, my goal is to create something practical and useful that can touch and change the lives of as many people as possible for the better”
With many Social Media apps already out there, there seems to be a lack of a platform that is made specifically for travelers and explorers like myself where we can share our adventures and let other people discover these unique locations for themselves.
So I came up with my idea: Xplr.io. A social media app by the explorers, for the explorers, whose goal is to inspire and help people explore our planet to the fullest.
PEST Analysis of Social Media/Travel
The next step for me was to take advantage of PEST analysis to take a peek at the Social Media/Travel industry. PEST analysis is a way to analyze the industry in which an idea persists in, and is the step in the product development cycle where we look at different industry trends, specifically Political, Economical, Societal and Technological.
The incredible rise of social media since the launch of Facebook in 2008 has been evident to anyone with an internet presence. With 3.5 billion active Social Media users, applications such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat seem to have taken over the modern world. With the rise of the modern smartphone and social media getting around a million new sign-ups every single day*, this is a very good time to capitalize on that growth.
“Xplr.io. A social media app by the explorers, for the explorers, whose goal is to inspire and help people explore our planet to the fullest.”
The rise of tourism is also growing as more and more people can afford it and as countries put more and more money into their tourism agencies. For example, Saudi Arabia just opened their doors to tourism as I was writing this blog post!
As people are more and more open to sharing their lives with their followers as well as complete strangers on Social Media, it seems to be perfect timing to develop Xplr.io.
What Does the Competition Look Like?
What has the competition been doing in regards to connecting Social Media with Travel and Exploration? Turns out not that much! Social Media apps like Instagram does allow you to post pictures from your travels, but rarely do the people posting tag locations, and if they do, the location is very general(ex. “Yosemite National Park”). Granted, many of these posts are posted to get likes and comments, not to encourage their followers to go and visit these places.
Other popular Social Media apps like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are good for connecting people and messaging, but none of them are focused on traveling and exploring specifically.
Youtube does have creators that make videos of their travel experiences, but the number of these creators is minuscule in comparison to the bloggers on Instagram(from my personal experience).
There do exist travel apps like Roadtrippers which allows you to plan a road trip and has POI’s with pictures and is more of a tool for travellers to plan out their trips rather than a social media app and does not have a lot of unique locations with coordinates and various media.
“What has the competition been doing in regards to connecting Social Media with Travel and Exploration? Turns out not that much!”
This leaves a gap in the industry which, through this analysis, I think xplr.io can fill and connect the travel community together in one app.
User Interviews: I get to talk to people!
Building a software product from an idea in your head is relatively easy given that you spend enough time working on it or hire people to do the work for you. In my case, the skills I will learn in college and the people I will meet should(hopefully!) give me enough resources to create a physical product, in this case Xplr.io, that I can share with my peers and the world.
Yet, will these people download my piece of software? Will they use it day in and day out, will there be a positive response to the product, will there be hockey stick growth? These are all questions that you should get answers to before even starting working on a MVP(Minimal Viable Product), because in the end, if the product is useless, why spend so much time and money on it in the first place?
The good news is that you have access to an unlimited amount of people who you can interview to make sense of your idea or domain. If you have a specific idea, doing unbiased user interviews will give you insight into whether your product solves a problem and/or fills in a gap in the respective domain. The more of these user interviews you do, the more you will see if your idea is a good one. Even if you don’t have a specific idea yet, but you are interested in a domain, interviewing people around you can give you insights into what is lacking in that domain and what needs fixing, giving you a direction to head in as you continue to develop your idea.
“…in the end, if the product is useless, why spend so much time and money on it in the first place?”
I conducted a few user interviews, one of which I will share with you here!
I spoke with a kind lady working at the Union Square St.Francis restaurant in an attempt to figure out how she uses social media, how she travels, and how social media ties into her travel experience.
To start off I figured out what social media she uses(Facebook), and if she travels(She does), to see if she was a good person to interview. I asked a lot of questions, but the few main ones for me were the following.
I asked her if she had a ticket to go anywhere in the world for tomorrow, let’s say Tokyo (as she mentioned she’s from there), how would she get ready for that trip, specifically, how she would plan her stay there. Being a totally unbiased and neutral question, it gives me insight into what tools people now use to research what to do while they are travelling. She said that she just googles “Places to go to in Tokyo”, which I know will lead her to a bunch of blog-type posts of touristy locations. The more of these user interviews I do, I should start seeing a trend in the responses to this question.
A few questions later I then asked what would she do if she saw a picture of a beautiful location in Tokyo and wanted to go there, but did not know where it was, what she would do. Here I am trying to figure out what people use now when they are a little more adventurous and want to find lowkey locations. She replied that she would probably do a google image search and try to find that spot that way but admitted that it is a laborious process that does not always end in success.
I asked some other questions and eventually shared my project idea with her, which she was very positive about and wished me good luck!
Through that experience I was a little more reaffirmed that this product is something that people would be genuinely interested in using, as well as opened my mind to a few different ideas for business models and how to design the user experience.
As for networking, I straight up shared my idea to a guy at a UnConference in SF and got a “I’m in!” type of response. I got his contact information and will let him know when I actually bring this idea to life!
The Actual Product
Now to my product idea. Xplr.io helps people who travel/explore share and find unique locations through a single social media application; Think Instagram and Yelp for explorers/travellers. Like I mentioned before, I have been part of that demographic for the last three or four years, and always have trouble finding unique locations for my travels. When I do find locations, the amount of time that process takes me is borderline insane. The research gets even harder when travelling to a remote country.
“…pretty much like Yelp for cool travel/exploration locations.”
When figuring out where to go on a trip, I find the basic locations on google, but for unique ones I scroll through endless Instagram posts, figure out what general area the cools ones are in and then go on 3D Maps and scout the whole area for this one spot.
Xplr.io solves the problem of finding cool spots by letting travelers and explorers make posts of unique locations with pictures, videos, descriptions and coordinates that other people can then look up or have pop up on their daily feed. Again, this is pretty much like Yelp for cool travel/exploration locations.
User Experience
Here are some examples of what the user experience in this app could look like both for people who create posts and those who are looking through the app and/or searching for locations to go to!
“Josh has just arrived back home from San Francisco, CA, where he spent a week exploring the Bay Area and all it has to offer. He came back with thousands of pictures from his trip, during which he visited many of the tourist attractions, but took the time to venture out and get to the more remote locations, some of which he has never heard about and found on accident! He now wants to share his trip with the community of Xplr.io, so he created a few posts with pictures/videos, small descriptions, and coordinates to locations! A few months later, Josh checks his account and sees that 12 people have visited these locations with his help and proceeds to give himself pat on the back.”
“Amy has a few pictures from an abandoned plane she found in a huge park in British Columbia and wants to make a post on Xplr.io but has no idea what the coordinates are so she creates a post and instead of coordinates she puts down the name of the park, “better than nothing!” she thinks. Sure thing, a few months later 50 people have already visited this location with the help of Amy! Probably did the 3D map trick! ”
“Jack has been wanting to visit Switzerland for the last 5 years and he finally bought his ticket! He now has to figure out where to go in Switzerland, so he went on Xplr.io, looked up Switzerland, set some filters, and found a ton of cool locations with coordinates that he double checked where legitimate. A week later he was exploring the best of Switzerland with the help of Xplr.io”
“Jane does not have any Social Media because she thinks it is addicting, but has downloaded Xplr.io, and checks it every couple of days for the daily curated feed of 20 or so posts that are based off of her previous interests and filters that she has set. If she likes a certain location, she saves it to her “for the future” folder. Who knows, maybe they will come in handy!”
These snippets are called User Journeys, and are a very useful tool used to develop the actual product. User experience is everything, so better get it right!
Wireframes
Here is a very simple, first draft wireframe that I have designed for Xplr.io. These wireframes help you see the whole layout of your project!
In Conclusion…
Thank you for tagging along with me for my product development journey! It is now time for me to go turn this writing on the wall blog post into something real. Will update this post once I have made progress :)
*(https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/amazing-social-media-statistics-and-facts/)