Problem
After the recent pandemic, travelers have alarming health concerns emerging in regular daily habits and many have shifted their attention towards social platforms for current information.
Travel agencies have been challenged to meet evolving world situations and the needs of solo travelers and
as millions of travelers are continuing to use online communities for support, solo travelers might have different experiences and difficulty finding opportunities created by recent travel trends.
Role: Design Researcher/Strategist
Timeline: September 2020 - December 2020
Design Team: Jennifer Yacoub - Rana Rizcalla - Wendi Su - Amy Davidson - Ching Ho
Project Overview
Our group decided to focus on Solo traveling Agencies. We are researching the types of solo traveling agencies, some are for women only, children. career-focused and others are educational. This trends matrix will help us identify the types of solo traveling agencies and what problems they face and will face now with all the changes happening due to COVID19.
This past year many travel agencies and travel-loving individuals were affected by the recent pandemic COVID-19. In my secondary research and as a group many topics were brought to our attention such as solo traveling, couples traveling, educational traveling, travel and health, travel buddies, travel airlines, travel accommodations, and much more. Many statistics have shown that travel has a different and wide audience and with today’s social media, it has become easy to access new places and look for cheaper ways to travel. Some travelers look for self-exploration by themselves, or quality time with their loved ones. All those are issues that can be taken furthermore into research with identifying a problem and a possible solution.
Solo travelers increase a lot, and it would be one of the trends in the future (Elliott, 2018), like, in Taiwan, solo travelers increased 60% from 2018 to 2019 (Zhang, 2019). In the US, 25% of millennials plan to take a solo trip in the next 12 months. 10% of all holidaymakers have taken a solo trip or holiday in the past 12 months (Condorferries, 2020). #solotravel is currently associated with more than 5.2 million posts on Instagram
The Process
How might we use travel services to enhance the safety and social experiences that solo travelers experience?
02
Know Context and People
Target Audience
Those who like to self explore, meet new people, and have a fresh perspective on life while planning what to do and when to do it. Individuals who are looking for self-empowerment while exploring new places and learning new things.
03
Design Research Field Work
In phase 3 we using design theories that would help us translate our data into information that is later used to come up with possible solutions. In our interviews, the goal was to gather as much data from our interviewees to understand the patterns in traveling and the reasons why they might choose to travel solo, in groups, or with family. We focused on the struggles, and challenges they face specifically while solo traveling. We later moved on to creating a research participant map and a working wall in order to make sense of the data we have collected and to categorize our key findings and aha moments by organizing data that fits our traveler's criteria to create our customized personas. Personas are crucial in phase 3 because they emphasize specific user needs and wants before solutions are planned in research(design). Moreover, the stakeholders' map summarized our targeted audience by sorting them into layers and relationships. Secondary and primary research validated and supported our data making it obvious in relation to the data we have collected.
04
Design Research Synthesis
In phase 4 we are using design theories that would help us frame our insights and findings through organizing the data into a clearer perspective, and dive deep into the process of synthesizing the data from all the research methods and turning those into valuable knowledge for future innovations. Through framing our insights we were able to identify patterns and come up with several opportunities for innovations. As a team, we were able to identify pain points, in other words, problems that solo travelers face or are afraid of. After recognizing some of those problems, we created a journey map that helped track down the patterns we have noticed when a person decides to travel solo. This guided us to look deeper into the specific pain points we listed. By creating the journey map, we were able to focus on problems that can have potential opportunities for innovation. Moving forward, we were able to put together an opportunity map, which helped identify opportunities in regard to enhancing the experience of solo travelers with a focus on safety, experience, budget, research, culture, and destination.
05
Design Prototyping Concepts and Design Brief
In Phase 5 we focused on brainstorming as a group to create possible design solutions focused on insights from the user journey map and pain points that were identified. By going through the brainstorming process and using divergent thinking, our group learned that generating a large number of ideas will lead to a wider choice of innovative design solutions. It is an effective method and resulted in the addition of possible design solutions which we may not have considered. Additionally, we created a design brief to consolidate our collected information up to this point. The design brief helps to prepare and organize our findings as we go into the next phase of the design process. We included the following components of the design brief: project overview, category description, target audience, company profile, business objectives, design strategy, and project scope.
06
Design Prototyping - Concept Refinement
In Phase 6 we focused on narrowing down our concepts and testing as a group to focus on and combine possible design solutions from our brainstorming session as a group. By going through the brainstorming process and using morphological synthesis, our group learned that some ideas that may look different still somehow connected and created concepts/solutions that might seem similar but they deliver different purposes. In our 3 concepts, we briefly discuss the goals, insights, features, and benefits of every solution and narrow down why expanding more on one of them is the best way to go. Moreover, we designed an ideal journey map that fits our concept, which helped us identify the key points when it comes t to the ideal traveler's experience. This leads us to evaluate our concepts more through a concept evaluation map and a value proposition map. The maps helped us facilitate comparisons and focus on narrowing down our concepts even more. Lastly, we did preliminary prototyping for our 3 concepts to test which one has the best outcome for our main problem and if we reach our end goal which is to use travel services to enhance the safety and social experiences for solo travelers.
07
Final Prototype - Testing Method
We assessed the feasibility of our design solutions this week through the theory of Prototyping. As a team, we collaborated to create prototypes for our specific design solutions based on user experience. In the process of making the prototype, we have once again reviewed the rationality and feasibility of concepts and developed the entire process and structure. Additionally, we created initial user testing methods for these prototypes. We believe that user testing methods are what would make this project go forward. When conducting user testing, we try to use storytelling to let users imagine that they are using our product in a context in order to discover more problems. It is a crucial part of the process and by going through the prototyping process we further clarified our design priorities.
Results and Refinement
From Prototype 1,
The Match app focused on three features: Profile Settings, Find a Match, book travel. The App’s goal is to help solo travelers find a traveler partner with the same interests and hobbies so when they travel they will make new friends and experience new experiences. After refining the results of the first prototype, the best features that worked are the profile settings and find a match, for the travel booking feature some users found it helpful others users preferred to look for their own bookings on other apps.
From Prototype 2,
In this concept 2, our features are based on the problems travelers might face. The four main features of this App focus on specific needs for travelers, which means this App is usually used during traveling. Some features for before traveling or after traveling could be added. Additionally, we will go back to fix some small parts when users did the tasks like current locations, the names of renting items, etc.
From Prototype 3,
The features in Concept 3 are based on health and creating convenience and the ability for the traveler to feel comfortable traveling. Trust will need to be gained by users to be comfortable adding their health and testing records. If users agree to share parameters, there should not be issues with HIPAA privacy standards. The biggest challenge with this concept is the trust of the user which may take more than stating privacy standards but also adding all terms and conditions with privacy policies and clear to see. Additionally, it would need to be compatible with other sites such as airlines, transportation services, and hospitals.
