My Process

Discover

• Competitor Analysis

• Surveys & Interviews

Define

• Personas & Storyboards

• Product Goals & Roadmap

• Sitemap & User Flows

Discover & Define

Who would want to time travel and how they would plan a trip?

To find out, I did a competitor analysis, interviewed three travel-prone users, and facilitated a virtual card sorting activity with seven other participants to best organize the site’s information architecture.

I synthesized my observations into a persona, Anna, to empathize with the choices users would make when booking Zeit.

Persona

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Based off of the research, I found that most users that have traveled in the past year like to plan collaboratively with a group. Most competitors, however, do not utilize an integrated share feature that helps users plan with others.

I introduced to Zeit a shortlist feature, where users like Anna could invite her friends to vote on their favorite locations for the next trip.

Design

After organizing the research findings, architecture, and flow, I iterated through different layouts on a sketchbook and through Sketch. Using the low fidelity wireframes and a style tile to define Zeit’s brand, I combined the two elements into high fidelity wireframes.

Wireframes

Deliver

I created interactive digital prototypes in InVision and tested it with four users (in person or through Google Hangouts). I gave them a scenario and a set of tasks. Along the process I asked about how they would follow the booking process. I wanted to test the navigability and usability of the desktop prototype.

Afterwards I debriefed with them to get their general impressions of the site.

Testing Scenarios

1. Scenario 1: You first would like to browse destinations on the site.

2. Scenario 2: You want to find an adventure to Ancient Classical China, and you know from research that it is between 1000 and 100 BCE. 

3. Scenario 3: You know your friends can only travel between the first and third of June. You would like to reserve the dates that the trip is available.

4. Scenario 4: You are interested on going on this trip with a few others, but before going you want to see what your friends prefer. How would you go about it?

5. Scenario 5: Your friends immediately respond yes and agree that it looks like a cool trip. They don’t need to see other options because they are sold on it! Now they would like you to finalize payment and will pay you back.

I synthesized the debrief feedback into an affinity diagram. I found that most users understood the workflow, but would rather search destinations using a map rather than a list.

Affinity Map

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Lessons Learned & Next Steps

This project excited me because I have been planning trips with friends in the past few months to Greece and Mexico. Given more resources and time, I would like to expand on the shortlist feature to see how users would take advantage of it. Working with Zeit as a case study challenged me during user research, since many have not used a service like it before (maybe in the future, though!).