Project Brief
Overview
Approach
Trip already offers great travel deals, a big draw for thrifty customers looking to stretch their budgets. However, the app needs to be streamlined in order to create a clear dialogue between the company and customer.
This redesign project is one look using critical analysis, to understand how customer satisfaction can be improved.
Objectives:
- Onboarding
- Allow a user to book a flight and/or hotel on a specific date for different destinations
- Find the best deals on flights and hotels and car hires
- Ability to select holiday activities
- Organise all travel plans into one itinerary
- Notifications
Demographic:
People aged 20-28
What?
Trip is an all-in-one travel company providing a number of different services from: Flights, hotels, booking attractions, car hire, airport transfers and train tickets. A one-stop place trying to make your trip as smooth as possible by eliminating the few controllable factors that might otherwise derail it.
Why?
The current app, while usable, makes for an overwhelming experience. Trip has a lot to offer. There is a lot of scope to increase the appeal and garner an increase user engagement and loyalty to the brand.
How?
We want to improve customer experience through an update in the Trip app interface.
Research
Users
Mapping Journeys:
There needs to be a balance between the standard expectations set by experience and expectations built through the use of various travel applications and companies, while also an element of difference to standout.
Main Questions:
Jodie
Age: 22
An easy way to keep track of travel deals without having to constantly check the app.
Carlos
Age: 27
Not always sure what activities to do when he gets to the holiday destination.
Crystal
Age: 25
How can she organize her flight, accommodation and transport in one go?
What basic features are central to the user experience?
Collating the information to consider what the journey of each of these customers might be in order to achieve our goal, repeat customers.
Using individual journeys of navigating through the app to see what functionality is synonymous throughout.
Beyond basic functions, what could push the user experience to make the app standout?
Competitor Analysis
As consumers, we often have an unconscious understanding of how we can navigate an app. It’s important to consider the established ‘norms’ across apps as a template to work from and to ensure minimal frustrations and problems with navigation.
Competitor observations:
Where can potential gaps and room for customer frustration between these apps and the original Trip be improved?
Points of improvement:
-Consistency of colour
-Utilising horizontal scrolling
-Simplifying layout
-Consolidating and reducing content
-Aiming for precision, focus on visual clutter
-Make branding central
Design Development
Sketches
Wireframing
Experimentation with layout and colour.
The way a user lands on the homepage is going to affect focus.
There are focused journeys, fact finding journeys
&
then there are journeys of chance navigating the app.
An exploration of solutions that may accommodate these considerations is important.
We wanted to fuse colour back into our ideas. A good start is with the brand logo.
Using these colours helps the brand to crystallise with customers.
Refining Functionality
Refining the user task flow
Trip is deal driven company. Offering competitive pricing.
The search being the first thing to ensure that transaction is prioritised.
We want to treat articles as a bonus. They come for deals and come back for the ideas.
Testing the search to payment flow helped us to see where the processes are different
&
where they can be consolidated to provide familiarity.
Design Solution
An all-in-one travel app.
Keeping customer service at the heart of it's brand values.
1.
Onboarding
Jodie, Carlos & Crystal have clicked onto the app for the first time. We want them to get to know us a little before we get down to business.
Framing the brand and what the values are to create an understanding between customer and company approach. Trip’s values are very much centred on providing customer service.
2.
Landing Page
They’ve come here for a particular purpose but we want to showcase what else Trip has to offer. We want show deals on offer for different trips framed on what’s new, what’s seasonal & what’s popular.
We want to build on the idea of the brand. Keeping their central values cognisant & presenting opportunities to build out other areas and services the company can provide. We want to create opportunities to draw customers back in.
4.
Booking a Flight
Jodie, Carlos & Crystal are going to book a flight. We want to ensure the information they need to make a decision is clear. Expectations of service need to be transparent through the booking process.
We prioritised the most important information after searching- flight price, what’s included and upgrade options- so the customers can make an informed decision. We want the customer to feel in control of how they want to experience their trip and show more than the basic offers. We want them to feel that they can tailor their trip.
5.
Booking a Hotel
When booking a hotel we want to give the customers a precise picture of the hotel/apartments available. We want to make sure the amenities are made clear so customers can plan accordingly.
Trip is showcasing the hotels with the end service ultimately out of their hands. In this case it’s important for Trip to be the advocate for the customer. Making sure, when possible, that other customers past experiences are available so that new customers can see an alignment between the description and lived experience of the hotels.
Project Summary
Lesson’s learnt
Less is more
Streamlining the existing app was an important part of achieving our main objectives. Using what was already there are a guide to finesse what the brand has to offer and how we can better showcase the brand’s strengths for both company and customer. This was achieved by making the products concise. We wanted to create a narrative of the brand through the display of their products so we can reduce the frustration and to maximise experience of the app.
Jodie, Carlos and Crystal were key to keeping the customer journey central in designing the experience. Fostering a positive brand association between the customer and company through the user experience will increase the likelihood of repeat customers.
Original
objectives
Improvements
& future
Onboarding
We added onboarding so new customers can get a sense of brand values. This could be made optional for users who have signed up.
Allow a user to book a flight, a hotel on a specific date for different destinations
The search navigation has made space efficient by utilising horizontal scrolling.
Find the best deals on flights, hotels and car hires
This is something the company already did well. We made an effort to identify what information was necessary to make booking clearer.
Ability to select holiday activities
We made sure that activities can be searched for on the navigation. This is an area that can be fleshed out in the future.
Organise all travel plans into one itinerary
We made sure organisation was possible under account. In the future, there could be an option to add ‘sharing’ after the booking is made.
Notifications
We wanted the notification bell to be very visible on the landing page. The task flow of the monitoring and editing notifications is an area that needs to built upon.