project type
personal
role
full stack UX/UI designer
Vagabond is a mobile app that enables travelers to authentically experience local itineraries through community planned adventures which support local businesses that travelers explore
despite having an abundance of information, travelers still seek to discover personalized, authentic travel plans because they aren't able to find locally crafted trip itineraries that fit their personal preferences
by providing local communities with the medium to showcase their adventures and businesses, Vagabond will help travelers find authentically planned travel experiences.
Travelers have a thirst to explore authentic travel experiences with more millennials planning their own trips, looking for something real. The proof is in the numbers.
I conducted a total of 8 user interviews with millennial travelers that had a variety of travel preferences as well as small businesses that had a craft or experience to share.
These interviews allowed for direct insight from travelers that are passionate about exploring the world and small business owners eager to share their craft or community. This enabled me to better understand different pain points and desires within the business of tourism or when planning a trip with different travel preferences.
I conducted a competitive analysis of the millennial travel market that caters to planning authentic experiences to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Pulling from top players and recommendations sourced from user interviews, I was able to identify a unique opportunity with travel planning resources that emphasize personalized, map based, locally sourced information for travelers.
From the user interviews, I was able to distill my findings through the use of affinity mapping. I identified a few key findings:
Using the results of the interviews, the competitive analysis and background research, I then looked to create personas which embody the traits of the target audiences.
Keeping in mind my user personas and accompanying research, I began to ideate different designs to prototype for both the millennial travelers and the local business owner.
From understanding the goals of the product, I shifted to creating user flows that helped users achieve these goals. My goal was to keep the flows simple, only designing what was important to them.
To help visualize how the app could be designed to enable these user flows, I outlined the information architecture, taking into account all the required features to enable the users goals.
Based on these insights, I began to sketch out by hand low fidelity wireframe designs that would enable travelers to explore personalized authentic experiences, while providing local small business owners the opportunity to broadcast their craft.
After designing the first round of the high fidelity prototype, I had users test the prototype by giving them specific task scenarios to help identify things that work well and areas for improvement. 9 users completed their tasks with flying colors, while providing valuable feedback that helped improve the user experience and visual design.
Folding in the feedback from the usability test, I tweaked the design of the final screens to ensure the designs would meet the different user's needs, the design felt simple yet impactful and the product felt like one cohesive unit.
With my research feedback and designs in hand, I set off to develop high fidelity interactive prototypes in Figma.
When the user first interacts with Vagabond, they are brought through an onboarding experience that highlights the key features of the app and collects their travel interests. Their travel preferences are then taken into consideration when creating their home feed with recommended ‘adventures’.
After entering their travel interests, users are brought to the home screen where a personalized ‘adventure’ feed is shown.
From here, users have the ability to explore content based on adventure type, region and country or search for more specific interests.
When users explore adventures, they are immersed into the experience from the eyes of the local. With the ability to learn more about those that created the adventure and the businesses or experiences that are stops.
Users have the ability to explore cities from an interactive map view. All the experiences of that particular city are shown. Each of the stops of the experience are outlined on the map, something that I found important to users from the user interviews because they would be able to modify the experience by adding on their own stops based on location.
Local communities can use Vagabond to broadcast their ‘adventures’ and businesses. For example, this adventure takes travelers through the Mexico City Mercado Central, stopping at local taco stand. Users can customize their adventure through pictures, number of stops and connection with Yelp or Google.
After completing my first UX project, I learned a couple of things from the experience that I have carried forward with me in future projects.
