WanderFam: Family Travel Mobile App Case Study
Creating a travel resource app for families who wander.
This is a self-driven app project I am creating as part of my online portfolio.
Ideation
Problem definition
The problem addressed is the difficulty I find when doing research into a destination I plan to travel to with my family. As an avid traveler, I normally would try to cover as much bases as I can during the planning phase and research for tips and recommendations online prior to traveling. Each time, I end up with bookmarking over 20 tabs onto my browser. I realized that there has to be a better resource or platform where all the information can be consolidated. Often times, I have to search specific keywords such as family-friendly resorts, restaurants with fresh seafood, shops to buy souvenirs, or landmarks to visit to find effective tips. These searches would lead me to a multitude of different webpages such as TripAdvisor, personal blogs, yelp, business pages or posting a question on a facebook group.
Brainstorming
Value Proposition
To create an app where families with children are able to access travel information and tips on one platform. Travellers are able to write short posts or blogs, share pictures, travel itineraries, guides, and update real-time location to connect with other travellers or reach out to locals for insider’s tips.
Introducing WanderFam, a travel app for families who wander
Process
- Ideation
- Research
- Design
- Prototype
Research
To attest to the frustrations I face when planning a family vacation , I wanted to conduct a survey using google forms and request for responses on parents/mom facebook groups. This method was most accessible as the community of parents in the groups are resourceful and helpful. Being able to retrieve answers from real parents who travel would help me identify needs and “pain-points” to come up with solutions. Below is the summary from the five questions I came up with:
Findings
From the five questions in the survey, I was able to put together some general needs of a mom planning a vacation for her family. What I wasn’t able to interpret were specific needs and solutions to come up with the main key features to include in the app. In my hypothesis, I had hoped to create an app that would make traveling easier for families but it is too general of a proposition. I thought about my own behaviours while planning a trip and recognized that this app would be utilized more in the planning stages as opposed to while being on the trip. I realized I had to ask more specific questions on what users’ needs are while in the planning stages.
Survey Part II
Striving for more qualitative research, I posed the questions on the same parents facebook group and received more than a few responses that I felt strongly represent two archetypes. This part of my survey concentrates more on specific needs while planning for a family vacation. The variation of needs boiled down to the difference between family dynamics, the duration of the trips, and financial situations.
Personas
From the survey research, there was a pattern in asking for reliable recommendations and finding family-friendly places. Validating that moms were the main decision-makers and planners for family vacations, I was able to put together two distinctive personas resembling two moms with different family dynamics, needs, pain-points, and wishes.
Working Whitney
31 years old
Married
2.5 year old toddler
Project Manager
Planning
- Starts planning for a family vacation once she books time off of work 6 months in advance
- Researches and makes packing lists for traveling with a toddler
- Researches on necessary items she would need to buy more of in the destination country
- Monitors when airline tickets drops in price but isn’t motivated by it.
- Tends to buy airline tickets at least 4 months in advance
Frustrations
- Tries to prevent taking long haul flights with toddler
- Wants to be sure to pack the right things and not have to buy too much while on vacation
- Hates how much time needs to be dedicated to research for a family vacation and how many sources she needs to go through online. Finds that there aren’t many sources that are specific to families with children.
Dream Destinations
- Spain, Bora Bora
Goals
- Tries to avoid places that are too touristy and rather eat at the local spots
- Stay somewhere close the beach and do water sports or activities
- To try to enjoy herself even though she knows she will be the main organizer while on the trip. Tries to pass on some tasks to her husband ie. to keep toddler occupied while she searches her phone for recommendations and makes bookings
Fears
- Getting sick while on vacation
- Forgetting to pack necessities for her toddler and having to find them while on vacation
- Not finding family-friendly places to stay and eat
Juggling Janice
36 years old
Married
9 month old baby, 3 year old toddler
Stay-at-home mom with a home-based specialty cake business
Planning
- Starts planning for a family vacation when she finds a good enough deal that she couldn’t pass up. Her husband is a city worker and has longer vacation periods.
- Travels at least twice a year so is quite knowledgeable on what to pack to travel with two kids
- Wants to find more family friendly destinations and not just resort to the usual places they go to
- Wants to get recommendations from moms who have gone to more exotic places.
- Tends to buy airline tickets at as soon as she finds a good deal sometimes even 2 weeks before vacation
Frustrations
- The amount of things to pack with two kids
- Finds it hard to determine what places are most safe for her kids
- Has to take into account the needs and wishes for her kids and husband
- Not being able to have at least one date night with her husband while on vacation
Dream Destinations
- All-inclusive vacations in Europe, Disneyworld
Goals
- Finds accommodation with daycare services
- To make sure everyone has a nice vacation
- To do activities to bond with her family and have lasting memories
Fears
- Her children getting lost
- Her children losing appetite
- Finding enough activities for her toddler to do
I was able to come up with these mains components to include in the app based on these needs.
- Reviews and recommendations from friends and family and travellers alike
- Top family-friendly places to eat/see/do
- “Borrow” itineraries that were used/recommended by other families
- Customizable set of filter search options
User Journey Map
Basing this user journey map off of our archetype user, Working Whitney, I was able to draw out the steps she would take to plan her family vacation with her husband and toddler son. Using a journey map helps me validate Whitney’s needs, goals, and the emotions she feels through out the planning and traveling process.
User Flowchart
After having a sense of our user’s journey in planning her vacation, I was able to come up with a flowchart to iterate the user’s process interacting with the application. The user would open up the app to four on-boarding screens which would take her through descriptions of the four main components of the app. She would then sign up for a new user account through email or social media. In each of the filter preferences screen, I have included a ‘skip’ button. This gives the user the option to come back to these filters later or to entirely skip it if they do not know what to choose at that moment. Filtering their preferences would provide the user with more accurate generated optimized results.
Design
Before sketching out the concept screens of the app, I had a clear idea of the components and placements of elements I wanted to go for. Using only rough sketches on paper, I wanted to highlight the filter preferences the user will encounter after on-boarding. Looking at the user flowchart, the filter screens make up a larger part of what the user will experience when using the app for the first time.
Sketching
Prototype
Knowing that I would only be designing the filter preferences screens, I opted to jump right from sketching to prototyping on Adobe XD. Referencing from my User Flowchart, I was able to lay out each element in lo-fi wireframes before adding design aesthetics in the artboards. Each of the filter screens only needed some slight additions and rearranging. After finalizing the designs, I added animations to the screens to demonstrate the flow of the app. The focal point of the initial user experience is to discover that they are able to get good recommendations deriving from the preferences they choose.
Conclusions
This app being my first UX project and prototyping, I had hoped to keep the process simple and concise. Even though I had always been using Adobe tools, I found that with each step, I had to go through small learning curves.
Takeaways
I have more than a few key takeaways from this first concept project:
- Learning that UX design is really about identifying and solving problems with good extensive background research
- Taking more time with sketching and lo-fi wireframing. Editing my designs in the artboards wasn’t ideal as I found that I was constantly going back to change the aesthetics and branding.
- To be able to do some user testing. Adobe XD was a limited tool in that I could only save my animations as a video file but not as a GIF or prototype for me to conduct user testing
Next Steps
- Switching over to Sketch tool for prototyping
- Conducting user testing
- Design the Home dashboard, My Trips, and Featured Vacations screens and conduct user testing on this stage
Tools used
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe XD
