Case Study | LocalGuide — iOS App
LocalGuide is an iPhone application that helps vacationers explore the city when they have an open window of time outside their preplanned travel schedule.
The first UX/UI assignment from the DESIGNATION program is an individual assignment in the realm of tourism. The challenge for this project is to create a digital product that provides information and recommendations about where people can go when traveling and what to see in different cities around the world. Given these conditions, I decided to explore the use case of a business traveler.
LocalGuide helps the opportunistic business traveler discover great travel experiences near their location when they have an open window of time to explore the city outside their preplanned travel schedule.
Personas Development
The user research of this project is based on the classic cooper school case study — also called LocalGuide. This research guide collects the transcript of multiple users interviews all relating to the users’ goals and frustrations in the travel and leisure market.
After carefully reading the entire document I quickly notice three types of travelers which share some common themes:
- The Family Traveler — “If it is not safe, we are not doing it.”
- The Business Traveler — “Just tell me what is good right now.”
- The Opportunistic Traveler — “What is happening this weekend?”
Based on these three types of users I build personas cards for each of them: Emma, James, and Wei.
Problem Statement
Given these three personas, I decided to focus on James, the business traveler. Because as a fellow adventurer I can empathize better with his own user’s goals and frustrations.
James doesn’t have a way to quickly discover great travel experiences near him; when he gets an unexpected free window of time outside his preplanned travel schedule.
My proposed solution will provide James with high-quality recommendations for the best cultural experiences around him. Giving him many details such as time, place, driving directions, ticket pricing, and booking capabilities.
Competitive Analysis
My exploratory research started by taking a look at the entire travel and tourism industry. Quickly discovering that the Apple App Store is very saturated with many travel apps that unbundled all travel needs. There are apps for hotel and airfare booking, events tickets, restaurants recommendations, map journaling, etc.
However, I decided to focus my research on the apps that offer experiences-discovery. Because products like peek, viator and such — which better served the needs of our target user.
Visual Study
During our visual study, we noticed the frequent use of bright and shiny colors. However, these solutions don’t address the main pain point of our user because they focus on app usage and cohort retention. They don’t provide high-quality and time-relevant travel recommendations. Their visual design makes the users feel like they are getting more questions to ask than the ones that are being answered.
User Goals and Design Principles
James primary goal is not to feel like he misses out on his trip. Especially, if he gets some extra downtime to explore the city outside his preplanned schedule. Among other goals such as:
- Detailed descriptions
- Time relevant choices
- Quick and high-quality recommendations
With these goals in mind, I centered on the development of the app with the following design principles; targeting James personality as a business professional and millennial:
- Fast and Direct — no answer should be more than a click away
- Trustworthy — our listings will be ranked by their level our quality and popularity
- Comprehensive — users will be able to see important information about their destination of choices such as photos, hours of operations, and driving directions.
Color Exploration
Finally, as the lead designer of this app, I want users to get to know all the best places in town. Period!
Wireframes
Now that our users’ goals and design principles are well established is time to start making some UX decisions. First, I decided to run some crazy eights sketch experiments to ideate the multiple use cases of the app.
Based on this exploration I decided that the best user flow to wireframe out will be the user story of buying museum tickets. Because it addresses James needs of having a time-sensitive recommendation on a high-quality activity he can quickly perform given that we offer him driving directions and booking features.
Prototypes
With this wireframe on hand, it is time to start prototyping the UX of the app. First, I decided to create the paper prototype to ensure that I did not miss any key steps of the main discovery and checkout workflows.
Now that we have a working paper prototype the next course of action is to start designing the barebones of the UI of the app. This way we can begin applying mobile design patterns to the app based on best practices such as Unity, Gestalt, Space, Hierarchy, Balance, etc.
Brand Identity
After I completed the color and logo exploration for the LocalGuide brand, I decided to go for a high-contrast approach.
This concept of a skyline with a sunset has the primary purpose of conveying the message of playful and fun. About the vibrant nightlife users can experience by using our app to explore possible venues. I applied this font and color treatment to evoke the feelings of elegance from a premium brand.
The Application
Since the beginning of this case study, I have been giving you some small previews of the final look and feel of the app. However, those were only the results of the first part of this assignment. The truth is that design doesn’t happen in a vacuum it needs to be user tested and peer-reviewed.
Therefore, this final version of the app. Which gives the users a more clear way to identify the affordances on the primary and secondary call-to-action buttons by making more obvious the active and inactive states of the elements.
The Website
Like any other successful app, we needed a marketing website where we can get users interested in trying out our product. For my personal concept of the site, I decided to use the design patterns of a fixed header for ease of navigation.
This design repeats the main download CTAs and the top and bottom of the page to maximize conversions. The how it works section takes the user on a journey describing the three primary flows of the app, discover, exploration and booking — with the power of our nine distinctive features. Business travelers like James will be happy that they downloaded our app the next time they get an open chance to explore their destination.
