Blogs galore

In general, travel and leisure is easy to read and write about. Blogs were a great place to start and see what others thought about when making plans. Not surprisingly, there are people significantly more organized than I am when it comes to it. I'm talking excel/google sheets and more.

Overall, the blogs were mostly opinion pieces, which was perfect from a research perspective. The tone read like an interview and it was all subjective. I just needed to look for insights.

They included links to sites/apps they enjoyed and explained why.

Additionally, they would touch on their order of operations when it came to the planning stages. This was really eye opening reflecting back on my own trips and knowing that I could have planned some things better.

Mental health impact

I really wanted to explore the positives and non-stressful aspects of travel planning. As mentioned, my goal was to lay a foundation to the planning experience, this meant considering the users that enjoy travel planning even when they don't ultimately go on a trip.

This was extremely important to explore especially living during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I found a National Geographic article that explains travel planning and its correlation to mental health.

A 2014 Cornell University study delved into how the anticipation of an experience (like a trip) can increase a person’s happiness substantially—much more so than the anticipation of buying material goods.

[Travelers] “end up talking to people more about their experiences than they talk about material purchases... compared to possessions, experiences make for better story material.”

Amit Kumar, Assistant Professor of Marketing and Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin

Reading between the lines

Overall, the secondary research gave me an idea of where the limitations can be in every aspect of travel planning.

The most important insight I gathered was how people like to organize their planning from start to finish. Not only did it support that there is no one-size-fits-all approach but it ultimately inspired the milestones component of my final product design.

Interviews

I sent out 10 screener surveys and of those 10, 8 responded of which I conducted 5 interviews.

Three of my participants traveled very often, whether it was with family or friends. One participant traveled often mainly solo and my last participant traveled both in groups and solo. This provided a great variety of experiences as well as a deeper look into group travel which was definitely something I was interested in learning more about.

I really just wanted to hear stories. So I led with that and their stories provided a lot of the information I would have gathered in follow up questions.

Some of the questions I asked were:

• Where would they start when planning a trip?

• How did they feel during the process?

• If they accomplished their planned activities and if not, why not?

• If they had any go-to sites/apps and what they liked about them

• Where would they find the inspiration/ideas for travel?

• How did they plan budgets, logistics, etc.?

Commitment issues

We've all been there... Dreaming about that weekend getaway or long vacation to another country, but when it comes to booking a flight, we hesitate.

This isn't to say that everyone hesitates. At the end of day, a lot of factors go into this such as budget, time off work, pandemics... You get the idea.

From my interviews, I gathered two types of individuals. Those who book the flight from the start, committing to the trip and those who plan the trip and book a flight later.

Again, there are a variety of factors that impact when that flight/car rental is booked but ultimately, the most successful plans came from the commitment upfront.

From just the general excitement of knowing there is "no going back" to possibly saving some money because it was purchased in advance.

This was another pain point for group travel. Unless everyone purchased a flight right away, there was always a question of whether or not some travelers would make it.

Blogs. We love blogs

Like I said, people love to read and write about travel. It's incredible how much of a resource blogs are.

Of my interviews, most users enjoyed reading blogs to some degree. From just putting them in the mood to travel to planning activities around what they read.

Some blogs aren't limited to just destination details, others provide tips and tricks into the logistics around planning, packing, etc.

Figuring out what to do can be rough

Most of my participants have different ways around planning their activities.

The most successful vacations came from an initial list of general interests but nothing concrete. These users would map out the locations of their interests, figure out accommodation, then create some sort of "itinerary" thereafter.

This was interesting, because even though that seems logical enough to stay around the activities that you want to do, most travel sites will lead you to purchase a flight and accommodation at the same time.

This ultimately helped with the order of planning phases in my design.

Users also agreed that group travel is not easy to plan. In every aspect, the biggest pain points are communication and participation. In general, activities are hard to plan when everyone's priorities differ.

The other stuff

A common theme I gathered from the participants was that packing came last and almost all of them forgot items until they were on the trip.

Granted, some items aren't difficult to purchase on location, but it's definitely not ideal.

Another common trend was not minimizing risks or planning logistics in time, if at all. I didn't know myself what that even entailed until I conducted my secondary research. I asked participants about them as well to gauge their knowledge and most blanked.

Risk Management refers to a variety of things such as:

• Travel Insurance

• Important Documents (Passports, ID's, Visa's, etc.)

• Vaccinations/Medicine

• Etc.

Logistics refer to the nitty gritty details around a plan.

For example: The logistics around visiting a museum are knowing the museum hours, entrance fee, travel time from hotel, etc.

Many participants don't think to plan for this or think about them last minute (on the trip). One of the participants even had a hard time getting into a country once without the proper visa.

Start to finish

Every user had a slightly different approach to their order of operations.

If they didn't start with a "Destination", they would start with a "Budget".

If they didn't end with "Accommodation" they would end with "Activities".

Those two actually would mainly come one before the other. As I had mentioned from my trends, the most successful vacations came from "Activities" then "Accommodation".

All the apps

Some users had their own "Travel" folder on their phones. Each site/app had their purpose of course, but most fit a "Budget" objective.

From tracking flight prices with "Hopper", to multiple search engines for hotels/rentals including, but limited to "Orbit", "Hotels.com", "Kayak", or even just "Google".

From an Inspiration standpoint, users loved "Pinterest", "Instagram", "Airbnb", and of course, Blogs.

One user even had "Stasher" to place their luggage in a secure location while they waited to check-in to their accommodation.

General thoughts

"I love to plan as long as I have time!", "I have a love/hate relationship [with travel planning]", "Exhausting", "Too complicated", were some of many thoughts that came to mind when it comes to travel planning.

These ultimately helped shape my user "types" but also many quotes were problems that I wanted to solve.

Completion status

The first component I wanted was some sort of label to identify their completion status. Essentially for every individual phase of the plan, upon completion, the milestone would reflect that it's done with a green check mark and there would be a completed percentage that would update as they work through the plan.

Prioritizing dream list

For the "Activities", the users would have the ability to prioritize their "Dream List" from Low to High which would assist in finalizing the Itinerary. This would also help with Group Travel.

There will be a Group Management feature at a later time, but for now the priority feature would help gauge importance and ideally meet the groups desires and expectations.

Explore

As I mentioned, users enjoy blogs and use several social media platforms to inspire and plan their trips.

I would include an "Explore" page that would allow users to see other existing trip plans for inspiration, read blogs and even find experiences (activities, tours, etc.).

There would also be the ability to link social media and explore "Pinterest", "Instagram", and "Airbnb" directly on the platform.

The vision and personality

jurni looks to break down the milestones of the travel planning experience in a way that’s simple to understand and exciting to put together.

Rationale

The purpose of this vision is to tell our users that we understand what normal travel planning may look like and that it may be stressful or difficult. I created a product that will simplify the process and has an efficient personality that is also passionate and eager to help our users.

Attributes

Relaxed, Efficient, Effortless and Determined

Our products' relaxed nature is contagious to our users. It's efficient in its experience while effortless in its use, all while being determined to deliver a great outcome.

High-fidelity designs

jurni looks to break down the milestones of the travel planning experience in a way that’s simple to understand and exciting to put together.

Keeping it simple

While implementing the style changes, especially when it came the colors, my initial wireframes leaned heavily on overlapping boxes and pages. This would have required a few more shades of colors but was also just very busy.

I simplified this by giving certain sections their own screens.

For example: In the Activity phase, I had originally placed the "Dream List" and Itinerary on the same page. I even included a Calendar to help visualize the activities per day. This was a lot to look at so I later designed a page dedicated to each function and scratched the Calendar completely.

This was cleaner, more interactive and led me to create an instructions flow to help guide the user through the process before diving in.

Even simpler

My wireframes also included very heavy curves for each box or input field.

I made these more subtle as I worked through applying the style changes.

Additionally, my wireframes had considered little to no imagery.

I incorporated a lot of imagery inspired by my mood board especially to identify the Planning Milestones and on my Explore Page.

Improving the activities milestone

Overall this section was easy to complete and very clear once the users dove into the sections.

However, all of the users needed additional direction to review the instructions because it wasn't organic in the design.

Previously, I had a question mark icon to guide them, but it wasn't obvious and they weren't inclined to tap it.

Without losing the button, I just added a flow for the instructions to come up immediately at first-time entry with the ability to skip it if they so choose. After the initial entry, the instructions would only be accessed by the question mark icon.

Self-navigation

Now it was important to consider the users who would navigate without instructions.

In my initial design, the users would need to add to their "Dream List" in order to add to their "Itinerary". The itinerary would simply remain blank with no possible actions.

So what would happen if they tried to add to their "Itinerary" first?

I added a simple "Add Activity" button just as the "Dream List" had and if they didn't have enough detail (date, time, etc.), jurni would add the item to the "Dream List" until they had more detail to efficiently place it on the itinerary.

Linking social media

When I provided the task to link social media to search things to do on their trip, the natural reaction was to either navigate the "Explore" page or "Profile".

This was previously part of the Activities page also titled "Explore". I ended up removing the section from the "Activities" page all together and will incorporate to the "Explore" page at a later time.

I also will incorporate linking their social media to an account creation flow when initially downloading the app with the ability to skip and add to the "Profile" page at their leisure.

Too simple

An unexpected result was that it was too simple to complete the planning phases. This is positive problem, but it needed addressed.

For example: The user would add "Scuba Diving" to their itinerary and would complete the Activities phase right away.

More than likely, Scuba Diving may not be the only activity they'll participate in, so I added a pop-up screen to confirm before officially completing the phase allowing them stay and keep working.