Project Overview
Client: YourTravel (Uxer School – Project)
Team: Antonio de Padua Gamboa, Ángeles González, Cristina Bermejo, Sara Vázquez
Deliverables: Strategy BluePrint, User Personas, Information architecture, User Flows, Wireframes, Visual Design, Prototype, Design System, User test, Presentation (PPT).
Tools: Miro, Notion, Figma, Lookback, Maze
Timeline: 05/17/2021 – 07/30/221
My Role
Since this was a UXER School project, we tried to do everything together. In summary, I took care of the following tasks:
Participating in the research, brainstorming, and competitive analysis.
Summarising goals and key findings.
Developing personas
Helping with the information architecture.
Designing wireframes and design the main screens.
Helping with the different components to develop the design system.
Designing the presentation of the project for UXER Day.
Research
The briefing
YourTravel is a startup that wants to help people who have an apartment or rural house for rent to optimize property management and relationship with their guests.
The main point to know is that YourTravel is not a booking marketplace, it only takes care of the guest after the reservation has taken place.
Main goals
Digitize and humanize the relationship between host and guest.
Minimize the host’s time.
Build trust and accompany the user in his customer journey.
Promote the local market in surrounding areas.
Reduce check-in and check-out time.
Research
Strategy
Blue Print
After several interviews with the stakeholders, we were able to identify the main project’s goals and business needs, then we decided to put everything together into a strategy blue print to maintain focus on the important points.
Research
Benchmark
Research
Users
interviews
Following our interviews with stakeholders and our research to understand the market, we decided to go for our users. We interviewed 15 people between 25-50 years old to identify their pain points, concerns, and goals. And our key findings were:
– Younger users would like to be able to access the property without having to coordinate check-in details with the host in person.
– Users usually go back to the photos of the house they have booked before getting to their vacations.
– Users usually struggle to understand how the main appliances work.
– Users feel very frustrated when they want to contact the host or property owner and are only able to talk with bots.
Main user goals
Arrive and access the property without inconvenience.
Contact the host if necessary with ease.
Enjoy the stay without inconvenience.
Enjoy the destination as much as possible
Relax and feel better than before taking the trip.
Analysis
Analysis
User
personas
Marc, 42 / married
Marc works for a law firm in Barcelona, he often finds himself wishing he could travel more, especially to remote places, but his work schedule is very demanding. So, when the weekend arrives, Marc tries to evade himself with good wine and if it’s possible, a short trip to a little town of Catalonia.
Pain points & Frustrations
Marc gets very frustrated when he books a place and it looks completely different in real life.
He hates tourist areas and feels very disappointed when he doesn’t get to know local people.
Dani, 27 / single
Dani works as an assistant for a retail firm, she doesn’t love her job but it helps her to be independent and save some money every month. She lives in a shared apartment in Madrid, she loves big cities but also enjoys taking at least a rural getaway every two months, to recharge energy and connect with nature.
Pain points & Frustrations
Dani gets very frustrated when she’s super excited to access the property she booked but has to wait for a person to give her the keys. She thinks it should be easier and somehow automatic.
When she arrives in a new place she feels very overwhelmed by all the choices she has.
ANALYSIS
Main goals
to taks & functions
After a deep analysis of the business needs, our user interviews, and developing our user personas, we put our hands on the real deal: translating the user goals into tasks and then into real functions that would be beneficial for our user and therefore, to the business.
Design
design
Sitemap
& User flows
After hours and hours of discussion and long brainstorming, we arrived at the conclusion that the user needed an app that transmits the idea of having everything in hand. We decided to have a fluid home, where the home changes according to the type of user it’s using the app (a user without booking, a user with an incoming reservation, etc).
So, the user with an incoming reservation will land directly to the next incoming reservation and will be able to see everything needed before and while the trip is happening.
The main points to highlight about our navigation are:
– The user always has in an accessible way the property section, the reservation list, the user profile, the contact, and the check-in/check-out buttons.
– The user only has to do two clicks to do the online check-in and will get the digital code to access the property.
– Under the inspiration tab, the user will find host recommendations and services that will improve her stay.
design
Visual design
For our visual design, we worked together on a mood board to starting to get a feeling of what we thought our UI should look like.
We decided to mixed the blue of the sea and the green of nature and get a turquoise color that we named “relax”. Then, we decided to choose our secondary color, and we went for the wet soil as the main inspiration.
We wanted a very light UI with touches of color and a kind of carefree and relaxed feeling.
design
UX Writing
YouTravel is about making the stay easier, carefree and relaxing. So we were very clear that we had to communicate this with our UX Writing. We used a calm, funny, and close tone to make the user feel there’s a human being behind our app.
design
Voyage,
our design system
Product design is a long journey and we wanted to make this journey easier for our fellow travellers, that’s why we design a map called Voyage, our design system. A collection of guidelines, rationals, and components that will help our colleagues to get the best out of YourTravel.
User testing
First
night out
After designing all the screen based on our previews user flows, we decided to go and test our prototype. Our prototype was tested by 35 users and this gave us very interesting insights, of which the following points were the most critical ones:
45% of our users could not find a restaurant for dinner.
17% of our users felt confused by image-type buttons while finishing cognitively demanding flows, like check-out.
We decided to iterate these points to improve the overall experience.
Learnings
In terms of project management, I learned that even when you’re working on a horizontal organisation (no bosses), it’s useful to have someone who is able to see the big picture of the project and handle the workloads and goals.
Regarding this, I also learned that when a wide project is given, it’s necessary to focus on MVP project to be able to achieve more. In our case, in the beginning, we lost precious time trying to design the whole app instead of focusing on a minimum first. After we were advised by our teachers, we were able to achieve even more what we thought.
In terms of UX & Product design, I learned that everything has to be based on research and to immerse myself in the user’s mind. Interviews were very beneficial for me and also to focus on the storyboard and journey of the user. In this case, I usually found myself imagining every step that a user would take to go on holiday to a rural house, from the booking until how to do laundry in an unknown house.
I also learned that even when we think something “looks good” if it doesn’t work, doesn’t work and that we have to listen to the user.
Do you want to watch our project presentation?
It will take you less than 10 minutes!
(in Spanish)