Remaining healthy while traveling: A UX case study
Understanding the problem
Recently, I was asked to create an app for a client, TripTribe, focused around the travel industry. To start my research I took to the streets and asked people about their experiences with various travel topics.
After speaking with 6 people I discovered a consistent trend. When asked the following question:
“How do you prepare to stay healthy when traveling abroad?”
Then I would get responses like this:
“Other than packing my usual medication, I don’t think about staying healthy…”
“…But this one time I got a parasite in India and was bed ridden for a whole month”
I discovered that people don’t think about their health in preparation for a trip abroad. At the same time, illness during these trips from eating street food, drinking dirty water, and other environmental factors was very common.
Some secondary research I found on 2019 travel trends from JWT talks about how millennials desire affordable, authentic travel experiences. This includes talking with the locals, taking tours focused on food, and flocking to off the map neighborhoods. This desire to live like a local while traveling means we usually don’t anticipate that the authentic experience in some places includes unsanitary food or having to protect yourself against malaria.
The knowledge gap represented an opportunity for a solution. People need an easy way get information on how to help prevent illness while traveling, because it’s usually not a concern until they get sick.
The Solution
DocBot is an AI chatbot that gives country-specific information around health precautions and common issues while traveling. I went with an AI chatbot because it represents a personable, interactive way to get necessary information, as opposed to reading a book or long document on the subject.
User Flow
Initially, I created a user flow focused on the chatbot’s prompted questions that would discuss topics around health with the user. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make the chatbot a feature of a broader app, or the main focus of the app itself.
In response to user feedback, I iterated my design by adding a saved trips feature containing all the saved tips from the bot as well as information around necessary vaccines and where to get them.
Wireflow
I conducted some user testing with my paper prototype above and got feedback that people would prefer a chatbot as the centerpiece of the app without the other navigation bar buttons. For the next iteration, I focused on the app’s main three features:
- A chatbot that prompts discussion around health-related travel tips (sourced from the CDC Yellow Book).
- Reminders of how to stay healthy, tailored to your location, while you are traveling.
- Information on vaccine requirements and travel clinics where you can get them.
Clickable Prototype
Finally, I created a clickable prototype through Balsamiq which I eventually presented to the client along with a keynote presentation.
Next Steps
In the near term, some next steps would be creating a higher fidelity clickable prototype, adding settings for the travel alerts, and figuring out how the bot would source information from the CDC. Further down the road I’d like to expand into crowdsourced health tips as well as safety advice the bot could provide.
Thanks for checking out my project! I believe this tool would improve travelers experiences by helping prevent illness while prompting people to think more about their health.
For more on the origin of this project and my ideation process around travel, check out this blog post. If you’d like to connect about chatbots, UX, or just want to say hi, feel free to reach out via Linkedin.
