Inside Stanford Design Garage- A Weekly Experiment Recap (week 03 / 20)

During week 3, we deployed our prototype to a user who we considered as an extreme user. She has experience travelling solo for a year to 24 countries around the world.

Here is the recap of what our prototype looks like: It consists of two major experiences laid out in two screens with two versions for each in order for us to do A/B testing.

Here is the first experience, version A.

“Getting to know me”

Insight we tested:

Travelers want to send signals to locals and/or fellow travelers of their travel preferences and style in order to gain special access to local-specific experiences and stories.

Questions we asked:

What kinds of signals do people want to to give?

How much effort does one need to give in order to feel a sense of self-discovery and worthiness of information

How we measured:

Length of emoji description

How descriptive is their verbal exchange

(left) our prototype 1 version A, (right) user’s input.

The key question we were trying to answer: What kinds of signals do travelers want to give to locals in order to gain access to local knowledge?

Here is the same experience, version B.

(left) our prototype 1 version B, (right) user’s input.

We were also testing the same question: What kinds of signals do travelers want to give to locals in order to gain access to local knowledge?

What we learned:

Users want to signal their sense of curiosity about local cultures.

Our user spoke of these emojis in terms of things she wanted to “learn”. For example, “I want to learn about wine, and I probably don’t want tacos since I want to taste real authentic local food.”

Users want access to local knowledge

“match you with a travel buddy” as an introvert I don’t feel comfortable about this. What does that mean a travel buddy? Do I like this person? Do I have to pay this person? Are they people who live there? Are they just travelers like me? or they are locals? If it’s just another traveler, they just gonna get lost as much as me. At least if they are locals they will know where they are going.

Here is the second experience, version A and B.

“Getting to know locals at their level”

Insight we tested:

Travelers use snap judgement to gauge whether their source of information is trustworthy or not.

Questions we asked:

What kinds of information from locals that would signal a sense of trust-worthiness to travelers?

What we learned:

Travelers look for opportunities to get involve with locals

“I don’t care what Jimmy did because it doesn’t involve me. I like seeing what Jimmy likes because I can get involve in these activities.”

This learning was unexpected to our team first assumption that by giving travelers information regarding what a local did through narratives as opposed to facts regarding what they like, this would get them more involved and want to engage more with the local.

Travelers make a snap judgement based on activity-cues whether a local is an extrovert or an introvert.

“I can see from the activities that Jimmy likes such as salsa dancing and going to bars that he is an extrovert. I wouldn’t want to go salsa dancing with him because I don’t want him to hit on me.”