VR Trip Planner
A solution that can help getting all the information about the trip and also enable him to plan the trip instantly.
Introduction
There are lot of trip planning methods and options online to help plan our trip, But with the invasion of latest technologies such as VR/AR have lot of potential in revolutionizing the ways these trips are planned and experienced.
The following is a an attempt to plan a trip in VR.
Research
I have Interviewed two of my friends who have quite opposite behaviors in trip planning and are of course travel enthusiasts.
Pain Points
Major Pain Points in the trip planning phase for them can be summarized as
- Need to plan a trip for the upcoming long weekend.
- Someone Suggested to visit Tosh valley near kasol.
- How to plan the Trip Itenary in such short time without missing important places?
Their trip planning process (Information Architecture)
I was actually observing closely while they were planning their trips and their process can be classified considering only major steps.
In most of the trips until the step of Venue Deciding they were able manage pretty easily but at those later steps they consume lot of time in deciding and finalizing.
Brainstorming
Lets focus to simplify the process after venue decision and redefine the remaining work steps. The following are the problems and our Agendas which we are targeting to cover in our Design process.
Commute mode: Generally road trips can be made in 3 modes.
a. Bike— Where the journey is also as splendid and picturesque as the destination.
b. Car — Where the destination is the utmost priority.
c. Public Transport — Where the trip is meant to enjoy with the group.
Other deciding factors are
- Does the trip involve rigorous activities at destination like trekking.
- How are the roads?
- What are the temperatures of the trip?
- What kind of locality the trip is planned?
- What does the weather forecast speaks about the trip time?
…… and the list goes on
Places for stay: These people generally plan either 3 or 4 star hotels.
Major potholes they fell each time, are-
- Getting the hotel at appropriate geographical location.
- Estimating the room sizes.
Food: Where and when to get food in the trip.
- Most of the time we are not aware of hotel location and cant calculate when exactly to stop. So we end up compromising on food as we shall be running late as per our trip.
- There are also cases where there is some local food variety and we miss to taste it.. :(
- Figuring out the Vegetarian restaurants is also challenging and time consuming, It is problematic if we have Vegetarians in group.
Places must see: Despite of loads of research there are places that we miss out in our trip.
- Also many places which we wouldn't have gone to see if we had a small clue of that place looks.
- Also many mind blowing images of that Location which we never find in our trip.
- Some good places where we want to spend some more time. !!
Solid Itenary Documentation: We need a best digitized way to save all our trip planning at a single source. All the notes that we have made.
a exhaustive, easily accessible, foul-proof documentation is what all we need at the end.
Let’s understand a user story(a very basic one) in a bit deeper level for a better understanding of working.
User Story
- Gurvin lands on the portal.
- He searches for a particular place, in this case Tosh Valley.
- He confirms the location & Time of travel based on the info.
- He experiences the place in VR.
- He checks the routes and weather report and confirms his mode of transport
- Then he picks the hotels by verifying their location in VR.
- He then checks the hotel details and views the hotel in VR before confirmation
- Then he checks for the local Food that is available there.
- He also uses Google Earth VR to explore the whole location and pins few places which he would like to see.
- Then he downloads the Itenary Summary.
Design Process
Landing Page(Pick Place & Time):
- He can select from the list of places and select the time of his travel
- He can explore about the place in the next step.
Select Commute mode:
- We have clear navigation and status card which helps user to manage his workflow at any point of time.
- We have a list of Videos, Images, 360 pictures to have rough understanding of the journey, user also can experience this in VR.
- There is Weather report of the destination which gives clear picture of the atmosphere at the destination.
Basing on all the above factors he can plan his mode of transport.
Pick Hotels:
- User has the demo-graphical view of the available hotels and also smart filters next to them. Which will help easily sort down to the hotels list.
- Also there is a option to view in VR which will give him added layer of Understanding of the Hotel.
- He can directly also scroll the cards list and its description is seen on the right side.
Pick Foods
- User can also add foods which he want s to try based on reviews.
- Foods once added to Itenary are automatically sorted as per our Trip planning Itenary.
Select places MUST see:
- These days most of the location data with 360 photos, panaroma are available in google street view and google earth.
- So user can almost virtually travel to the specific location and can have a rough overview of what h can expect there.
- He can also pin various Locations where he wants to spend time. Which are automatically added to trip Itenary.
- He can have access to different pins from various other users and explore them virtually before actually traveling. !!
Most of the project is still in initial Phases. Will update you guys once done.
Hope you guys liked it. Thank You !!!
Uttham is a Proactive Ui/Ux Designer, indulged in creating seamless interactions for BPM,CRM,ECM enterprise products.He has started designing for VR/AR since past few months.
You can catch him at www.utthamudatthu.design
