PLAN
your next adventure with us
What is Plan?
Plan is a website designed for people to make travel plans and have everything booked at the same place. Without going to other site, people can search for places and see the top rated attractions and pick an attraction to see the tours. They can also see the photos and reviews left by previous travels to help them make decision. The site also provide information like address of the attraction, weather, things to bring and tips so that people can be prepared.
The problem
When doing the travel planning me and my friends are always looking and searching for information from different websites. We would each take a task and go search and come back to the group. We would go to Google Maps to check the location, photos and reviews; we would sometimes go search the place at instagram because we want to see the most updated photos; we would go to travel sites to check out famous attractions and reviews; we would go to the .gov site for more information and be redirected to the tour company’s own site; we would go ask friends who’ve being there before for suggestions. Everytime we visit a new site or use an new app, we need to first learn how to navigate before we can collect useful information. Finally we made our decision and ready to book our tours we need to gather all the tours’ schedule and location to one place to make sure that none of them are in conflict.
Challenges
How might we create a better travel activity planning experience resulting higher conversion rate and encouraging people to write more reviews?
Findings
The human population is made up of 65% of visual learners. This means that we can influence 65% of consumers using images. People can remember more than 2,000 pictures with at least 90% accuracy. (How to Use Images/Visuals to Boost Website Conversion Rate by The Daily Egg)
My goal is to design a better travel activity planning experience which includes information gathering, decision making and finalize booking, so I researched what makes information more straightfoward and more memoriable. With so many information to sythesis and digest images can drametically increas efficiency and aid memory. I kept this finding in mind while designing my solution.
Core Experience
A picture is worth a thousand worlds. At Plan site people will see beautiful pictures for the places they want to go and be immersed into the scenery. With clear flow from city to attractions to tours people will learn how to navigate very fast. Checkout the photos and reviews others left, work with friends to co-plan, book tours and see the itinerary before paying all in one site helps them save time and get booking done quick.
I mapped out the current customer travel planning journey and asked HMW question at each step.
By answering the HMW questions I was able to recreate the journey and have a better idea in mind in-terms of what needs to be included in the design.
Solution
From the research I found that people usually browse and collect information on both desktop and mobile devices before trip. However, when they reach the stage of finalize booking they often move to desktop to finish the task. During trip, mobile becomes the main device used for checking information due to the mobility. Post trip they use either desktop or mobile to write and upload reviews. Therefore, I designed a website to focus on planning and booking and currently working on an app focusing on checking information during trip.
High-Level Flow
Below is a condensed version of flow to show the core experience.
Wireframe
01
INTRO
Feel like travel planning is too time-consuming? Want to travel like a local and know all the tips before going? PLAN is a place you can find all the info you need to plan your next dream trip. No need of jumping from one website to another, PLAN is one place for all.
02
WEB
Everything you need for your trip is here
All the attractions at your destination are listed with detail information and customer ratings. You can like an attraction and come back later. You can also read some reviews and discover some places from other peoples trip.
User can like a place to save it and make the decision later.
Real photos uploaded by fellow travelers with reviews including their itinerary, stories and insights. So, user can see and know what to expect for the trip.
Like a review to save it so that user can always go back to.
Tours are collected together for you
Tours are collected for each attraction, see the tour details and read reviews from other people to know the first hand tips and things you should prepare.
Tours are collected for each attraction, see the tour details and read reviews from other people to know the first hand tips and things you should prepare.
Reviews will change and become more targeted based on the current viewing content.
Book your trip directly from the website
No need of jumping between websites, secure your trip on the website and have your itinerary ready for your group. You can work with your friends to plan the trip together.
Trip detail
Tours can be reviewed anytime, add tours to your trip and pay together later.
Co-plan with friends and see the change updated in real-time.
Reservations on one page to see the schedule before booking to avoid conflict.
Personal account
Manage your upcoming trip add more friends and check out the places you've been to under your personal account. It's a place to relive your memories and create more.
This is a way to encourage people leaving more reviews by providing a place for them to save their memory.
Places you've been to to help user collect and store their memories and encouraging them to write reviews after each trip.
Potential Improvements
User research to aid design decision
This is a personal design excerise so I made most design decisions based on my and my friends experience. For instance one of my assumptions is user would like to first see photos before making a decision and this would be prioritized before reviews, cost and other factors. Although this assumption is backed by real research data, user research would still be a key step to approve or disapprove my assumptions.
If this is a real site heavily based on user uploaded content then it might not look as good as the mockup.
One thing we can not control is the content and the quality of the content that users are uploading. If the photos they are uploading do not look good or are low in quality then it will do just the oposit of promoting the booking activities. For this reason, the solution needs to be refined based on the actual user cases.