Local + Culture = LOCALture, a responsive website designed to help travelers find culturally authentic experiences in the location that they are visiting. Upon creating an account the user is prompted to input their interests and any trips that they are going on. Users receive a feed of travelers with mutual interests who are coming to their city and can recommend activities and locations that they think that traveler might enjoy. Users of LOCALture are only able to recommend spots in their city; this is designed to keep the recommendations as culturally authentic as possible.
TIMEFRAME
2 WEEK SPRINT
TEAm
3 UX DESIGNERS
ROLE
UX GENERALIST
TOOLS
SKETCH, INVISION, DOCS
SUMMARY
RESEARCH
PROCESS
SYNTHESIS
ITERATION
RESEARCH
My team wanted to create a responsive website that helps frequent travelers find and plan activities.
We began by interviewing 7 frequent travelers about how they plan activities when they travel.
Some key findings about our users:
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Feels ‘obligated’ to see iconic landmarks in the city they visit, however they don’t always enjoy the experience.
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Hates crowds.
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Likes to get recommendations from locals of the place they’re visiting.
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Values culturally authentic experiences over tourist traps.
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Travels as often as they possibly can, often taking a long weekend trip.
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Finds it difficult to see everything they want to during their short trip.
From this information we created our user persona Sabrina, a seasoned traveler who still struggles to figure out which activities will bring her the most satisfaction when she is traveling.
In our scenario Sabrina embarks on a long awaited trip and automatically heads to the most famous landmark in that city. She finds the attraction to be overrun by crowds and not what she expected. This is where our area of opportunity lies.
Sabrinas journey Map
THE PROBLEM
Sabrina likes to take frequent short trips to maximize her vacation time. She doesn’t have the time to spend all day in line at an attraction that she doesn't find valuable in the end. She values being able to experience the real culture of the city where she is visiting, not an attraction that is solely visited by tourists. Sabrina has found that recommendations from locals often provider her with the culturally authentic activities she is looking for. How might we provide her with trustworthy recommendations to plan activities valuable to her cultural experience in a way that will make the most efficient use of her time?
IDEATION
After sketching ideas that could solve our problem we arrived at a basic concept. We wanted to create a website encouraging locals of a city to share their favorite spots with travelers. To accomplish this the idea of our site is that only locals of a city are allowed to write and share recommendations for their favorite spots. For example, only a New Yorker would be able to write a review for a spot in New York. Our hope is that this model will encourage travelers to visit locations were they can experience authentic culture rather than tourist traps.
FEATURE PRIORITIZATION
My team and I used a method called MoSCoW mapping to plot our necessary features. You create a matrix with the axiss being high effort and low effort, high impact and low impact. You then plot each feature on the matrix. The first quadrant is your Must features, followed by Should, then Could, and finally Won’t (for this iteration at least). From here you can figure out which features are necessary in your MVP (minimum viable product) and focus on those.
Here is our MoSCoW map.
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MoSCow Map
DESIGN STUDIO
We conducted a design studio for each page of the mobile site.
The format was:
1. 10 minutes to sketch ideas
2. 5 minutes to present each idea
3. 5 minutes to combine the ideas into the best possible option.
4. Repeat.
Our main features included:
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Trips - page where you can view your trips and add new ones.
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Recommendations - for each city where you can view activities suggested by locals. These are organized by your interests.
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Itinerary- where you can add activities. This includes a map with the activities pinpoint locations to make traveling between locations more efficient.
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Send Recommendations - to travelers coming to your city based on common interests.
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Profile - showing your interests and trips.
TESTING
We brought our wireframes into sketch and then made a prototype in InVision.
We tested users on two tasks:
TASK 1: find a cafe in Paris and add it to their itinerary
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3 / 5 users rated the task 1 out of 5 in terms of ease of use. (1 being easy, 5 being difficult)
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4 / 5 users stated that they would not like to choose the exact time that they visit an attraction
1. Tap Paris
2. Tap Cafe
3. Tap add to itinerary
4. cafe is added to itinerary
CHANGES MADE:
1. We decided to make scheduling an activity available by the day not the hour.
SCREEN BREAKDOWN:
2. Home Page - we decided to make the home page image heavy to inspire our travelers
3. Suggested Place - based off the trip you are deciding to go on you are shown suggestions
4. Location Page - Users are shown reviews by locals who recommended the location
5. Add to Itinerary Option - This allows the user to save the spots they would like to see on their trip
6. Map Feature - The map on the Itinerary page shows the user all of their locations at once, ideal for making routes
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TASK 2 : Recommend your favorite BBQ spot to a traveler visiting your city.
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3 / 5 users rated this task a 3 out of 5 in terms of difficulty . (1 being easy, 5 being difficult)
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Users did not think to look in messages to send a recommendation
1. Tap messages
2. tap on person looking for BBQ
3. Type in location and select from dropdown
4. Type review and tap send
5. Recommendation
is sent
CHANGES MADE:
1. We removed the messages paged and renamed it 'My City'. This is where users would recommend their favorite spots to travelers visiting their city
SCREEN BREAKDOWN:
2. Travelers in your city with similar interests to you looking for recommendations
3. Locations are powered by Google Maps for accuracy and safety
4. option to make review available to public
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DESKTOP SITE
Next we started another design studio for our Desktop site. We liked the idea of combining pages when possible. We were able to combine the recommendations for a city with the recommendations for a specific location by implementing a split screen. Also we were able to show a few days of the trip at a time rather than one.
SCREEN BREAKDOWN:
1. My Trips page - where you can add and view your upcoming trips
2. Suggested places- these are shown after you click into the page with the specific country you are visiting
3. The location is shown with all the recommendations below it
4. Send a recommendation to a traveler coming to your city
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NEXT STEPS
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Our immediate next steps would be to create an onboarding process to explain the concept of LOCALture to potential users.
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For the future of this, app my team discussed creating some sort of incentive program encouraging users to send recommendations.