Travel Pal is an app that allows travelers to book flights, hotels, and activities under one application while also receiving the best deals.
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
2 months
Tools
Figma, Canva, Miro, Zoom
Why it matters
People around the world usually are able to take time off work to take trips. People often spend time planning their trips and comparing options. This situation causes frustration which leads to people rethinking if they should take trips or even obstruct their entire travel experience
Problem to solve: How might we reduce the time it takes to plan a trip to reduce frustrations among travelers.
I started by reviewing research studies and articles to better understand my target audience and their pain points. To gather insights, I sent out a screening survey, receiving 20 responses. From these, I selected frequent travelers who enjoy trip planning and conducted in-depth interviews with them.
Insight 1:
Travelers mainly plan trips across weeks while focusing on flights, hotels, and activities.
Insight 2:
Themes from the informational interviews emerged: Planning length, importance of comparing deals and reviews.
Persona: In addition, I developed a persona to help guide my design towards a target audience. I updated this persona throughout the process as I gathered additional information.
Next, I used HMWs to create site maps focused on key user flows, or red routes, for booking an entire trip. These maps guided my sketches and highlighted the need for a collaboration feature, along with options to book flights, hotels, and destinations—reflecting common traveler behavior.
Wireframe and mockups: Following the completion of my lo-fi sketches, I began creating mid-fidelity wireframes.
Goal Gradient effect
Problem Solved
As the progress bar increases it can help increase and motivate users to complete their booking.
Why
Stage 4: User Testing
After I encountered pain points through the usability test I began to reiterate the prototype for a final design.
Pain Point 1
4/5 users were frustrated by the lack of reviews. Expected to view "bad" and "good" reviews for each item.
Pain Point 2
Users were confused by the inability to share their itinerary among friends.
Pain Point 3
Users were confused by the inability to share their itinerary among friends.
Stage 5: Final Presentation and Handoff
The project was concluded after all iterations were made and the prototype was finalized.
Outcome
Designing the app from start to finish was very challenging but extremely rewarding. There were so many things I learned from this project. I understand how important research is in order to make any design decision. It is also important to know your target audience and to constantly revisit the persona. This project also showed me how important the user-centered design process is and to stay on track of deadlines. Moreover, this was a rewarding experience because I was able to develop my UX design skills and gain a better understanding of the process.
