Find Me Places
UX/UI Design of a Mobile App
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About
FindMePlaces is an integrated travel app that combines informational content and social networking features. This app serves as a one-stop solution that makes travel planning simpler and easier - with its the unique selling points lie on the automatic & personalised scheduling itineraries (with points & a map) and native leaders/companions for travel finds.
Project type
Individual - UX/UI Design (User experience, Interaction Design, Ideation)
Timeline
8 weeks
Deliverables
A prototype for mobile app
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Users & Audiences
FindMePlaces aims to target the young adults (16-24 years old) and Millennials (25-40 years old) - however, more emphasis towards the young adults. These two groups are are considered as having to juggle multiple priorities at once - balancing their work and life. For this utmost reason, encapsulating all the travel needs in one application can be significantly beneficial: it fundamentally improves efficiency in terms of travel planning.
Identified User Problems
1. It's undeniable that travel planning is a long and tedious job (it requires a lot of research here and there), hence, some failed to make a trip plan successfully.
2. It's especially hard to travel to destinations with foreign languages and cultures.
3. Creating a coherent itinerary may seem simple, but it is not. In fact, a lot of people struggle with it.
Proposed Solutions
1. Find Me Places allows users to create more effective travel planning as it encapsulates all the pertinent information in one.
2. Find Me Places involves social networking features that can connect users with local guides, interested travellers seeking for company and first-handed information regarding travel tips/requirements.
3. Find Me Places offers an autonomous itinerary system where users can select their travel destinations and have them arranged in a coherent system.
Design Thinking Processes
Project Timeline
Market Research
Market Trends on Travel and Tourism
With the pandemic restricting physical interaction, there has been an emphasis on:
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Mental Health & Wellbeing - the forced abrupt isolation and transition to a remote
working setup has affected people’s mental health.
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Gig Lifestyle - the implementation of long-term isolation has encouraged people to
develop new skills and take on-demand skill-based projects. Ultimately, the demand for solo travel increases.
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Technological Advancement - with the distance forced upon ensuring health and safety during the pandemic, technology plays a pivotal role in connecting people from afar. This includes the digitalisation of services such as travel services.
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COVID-19-related News & Safety & Health - COVID-19 makes people become increasingly health and hygiene conscious, in which the considerations for travelling will be hugely impacted by covid-related issues.
Competitor Analysis
By analysing the product’s features, navigability, strengths and weaknesses, it’s possible to know where to improve and maintain. I adapted the competitor analysis template from Jaime Levy’s book ‘UX Strategy’
Phase 1 - Emphatise
Empathising targeted users comes as the first stage to view and analyse situations objectively. In this project, this process is implemented twice - firstly, to identify users’ problems and needs through personal experience and desktop research; secondly, to segment target users and conduct real-world surveys (to 20 people) and In-Depth Interviews (IDI) (to 4 people) to eliminate any presumptions regarding them
Survey
The survey questions are roughly classified into:
1. Demographics
2. Preferences/Lifestyle
3. Identification of travel-related needs and pain points
4. Analysis of the already existing travel apps.
Young Adults (10 people)
Millennials (10 people)
Interview
After gaining a rough understanding of potential users - their demographics, lifestyle, travel preferences and experience in using competitors’ apps - interview questions aim to validate the assumptions. They are sectioned into three parts:
1. User introduction
Icebreaking questions:
- What do you do for work?
- What value do you hold?
- How do you describe your capacity in technology?
As a ___ (student/ working professionals/ freelance job/ etc.), what do you seek the most within a travel app experience?
- What is of the utmost importance, and why?
- Your frustrations, why?
2. Topic-specific questions
What comes first to your mind when thinking about travelling?
- How would you describe your ‘day in a life’?
- What do you do during your leisure time?
- How would you describe ‘travelling’?
- What is the first thing that comes first when you think about travelling?
3. Product-opportunity question
As the potential users of my proposed travel app,
- How would you describe the ‘perfect’ solution for travel app?
- How is this overall app sustain your travel-related needs?
- What are the particular features that you want your travel app to have?
- What features do you think would be nice in addition to the travel app?
- What features do the competitors have that you particularly like? Why?
- What features do the competitors have that need improvement? Why?
- What suggestions do you have regarding these?
Phase 2 - Define
After gathering information from the survey and interview, I tried to steer the focus on the problems and direct them toward solution-based thinking (opportunity). This allowed me to further refine Find Me Place's unique selling proposition:
Survey & Interview Insights
Young Adults
Problem:
Young adults often feel clueless when it comes to travel planning. Often, they don’t know where to start, where to research, where to buy tickets and where to find guides. Consequently, they often hop around across platforms to plan a single journey. Then, they have to make a schedule and itinerary for the whole trip in which they have to match the place and location. This is inconvenient, especially with their busy schedule.
Opportunity:
As being technologically adept, it will be beneficial to have an electronic solution where every travel need are encapsulated into one.
Travel needs such as: popular places, reviews, buying tickets, book hotels, and itinerary planning
Millennials
Problem:
Millennials are usually working professionals, which means they have long hours of working, tight deadlines and high expectations. Therefore, travelling usually comes in 2 forms: business travel and personal travel (to relieve the stress).
However, as Millennials (who have been working for quite some time), they crave credibility. They crave full information to ensure that their ‘escape’/’plan’ works perfectly for them.
Opportunity:
As also being tech-savvy, Millennials will greatly benefit from complete travel information. Also, the pandemic is raising concerns for health and hygiene.
Information including: weather, the destination, Covid-19 cases, restrictions, public transport route, and more.
Through interpreting these data, I created a visualisation of the targeted users through user empathy map and user persona.
Young Adults - empathy map & user persona
Millennials - empathy map & user persona
Phase 3 - Ideate
The process of ideation began when my local friend (Australian) asked if we wanted to go to Bali for the winter break . However, we struggled with booking tickets, finding places, finding transport and making itineraries. We thought it would be so cool to have a single app that can sort these things out. Also, my friend once mentioned, “that’s why it’s easier to go with locals when going abroad.” Ever since, I’ve always thought that it’s a good idea to include native leaders to guide people in their travel plans. So, I decided to brainstorm some ideas here:
After locking some features to be included in the app (based on the target users) - incorporating social media profile, explore pages, home page, itineraries & native leaders - I created an information architecture (IA) so that I have a solid structure of how the app should be.
Phase 4 - Prototyping
Prototyping comes in the fourth stage - it allows me to:
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Create a solid fundamental from which my ideas are visualised (design, branding and overall aesthetic).
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By sectioning this process into three stages: Low, Mid to High-Fidelity Wireframes, I can adapt to changes quickly. It’s also important to constantly ask for feedback along
the way.
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It’s also important to keep doing user research to gain more and more understanding of the potential users.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
High-Fidelity Wireframes
Onboarding Pages
Social Networking Features
Personalisation
Itineraries
Phase 5 - User Testing
The last stage comes the user testing - through it, I can learn more about the intended users, get feedback, and eventually improve my prototype. Whilst asking for feedback, it's important to let users experience it without any instruction on where and how to go to certain part. I also observed them while testing to look at their body languages and non-verbal cues.
Feedback implemented along the design processes:
1. Added a chat function - Milestone task feedback from class.
2. Condensed the transition page from the onboarding to only one slide - Milestone task feedback from class.
3. Added many pictures to increase engagement - L.M from class.
4. Inspired by the OOO app for Find Me Places' recommendation feature - I.R from class.
5. Incorporated a map to visualise the itinerary system - I.R from class.
6. Darken the colour palette to dark blue & increased the text size to increase readability - L.O from class.
7. Included the explanatory text to contextualise the universal navigation - G. from class.
Final Pitch
It’s time to say good bye to the conventional, complicated and time-consuming travel planning - as we introduce to you, Find Me Places!
Clueless on where to go for your travel? Want to find some mates to travel with you? Crave for some real-time and credible recommendations? Need to plan itinerary fast? Want to hop in for some short tours during your holiday? We’ve got you covered.
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FindMePlaces is your all-in-one travel solution - making it easy and convenient for you to explore amazing adventures ahead! We aim to make travel as easy and light as you can imagine.
Why you should download the app? Our differentiating offerings are:
● FINDING MATES TO TRAVEL WITH YOU:
No more being lonely as you try to enjoy your me-time. Got bored during your solo travel? Want to find a companion of the same interests? Hop into our app and connect with travellers nearby, or, perhaps, those with the same common interests. Join a conversation on our chat platform and make new friends there!
● MAKE ITINERARY FAST AND VISUALISED:
Got no time to schedule and arrange your day-to-day itinerary? We’ll sort this out two clicks away! Just select your designated travel places, and we’ll do the work for you! After all, what’s better than an automated and visualised itinerary?
● ASK TRAVEL LEADERS FOR RECOMMENDED PLACES:
It’s undeniable that we often search through countless reviews on the internet to find out that they were 2 years ago– irrelevant. Here in FindMePlaces, you can see user reviews daily! We promise that it will help you a lot in your travel planning!
● SOCIAL MEDIA ASPECTS:
A niche social media dedicated for travel-related posts? Yes Please!
What are you waiting for? Download Find Me Places now and have everything you need for travel in one go! We guarantee you’ll love it!
Disclaimer
This design is part of the student learning experience in 52686 Digital Publishing for Apps practice (Autumn 2022) in the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). This project was developed under the guidance of the assigned tutor & subject coordinator, Natalie Krikowa.
Final Mark: High Distinction (HD)
Hi Jesslyn,
Thank you for your submission of your ‘Find Me Places’ app prototype project. The app has great potential and you have demonstrated excellent concept development and UX/UI refinement. It had effective and appropriate features and functionality and a consistent UX/UI, with professional finesse around legibility, functionality and usability.
At times the text was probably still too small, and when viewed on a mobile device, was quite difficult to read. I particularly liked consistent and contemporary UI design. The prototype integrated many professional features including scrolling containers and animated transitions.
You produced some great original content for your app, and appropriate third-party sources. You engaged well with the subject materials and readings and demonstrated your understanding of these through effective integration of them in your report.
There is strong discussion and evidence of user research and testing, and how these activities helped improve your concept and design. The report was significantly over the word count, which impacted your grade for the clarity of expression crtieria. Overall, excellent work here, well done. Thank you for a wonderful session. - Natalie