Just You Travel Dashboard
Responsive Design for Travel Website
A simple to use, robust travel tool personalized to the modern traveler’s individual needs.
Just You is a travel company that focuses on providing travel packages primarily for solo travelers. Individual travelers who book trips through Just You will be joining a group of like-minded individuals on their tour.
As an avid solo traveler, I was inspired to audit Just You’s current process for searching for, booking and managing trips, a process which I believe should be simple and intuitive. What I found was an outdated website that is not optimized for the modern digital traveler.
MY ROLE
User Research, Persona Creation, UI Design, Wireframes, Prototyping, User Testing
TIMELINE
80 hours to deliver MVP
TOOLS
Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Google Forms
THE CHALLENGE
The existing process for searching for, booking and managing trips through the Just You travel website is outdated, sparse, unintuitive, and difficult for users to manage independently as many tasks require a phone call to a representative to complete.
My assumption is that the sparse and outdated interface for managing trips is leading to customer drop off and fewer trips purchased as users seek out more robust personalized interfaces with simplified processes.
THE SOLUTION
Design a responsive travel dashboard for the Just You travel website users to optimize the user flow of managing their trips with a focus on simplicity and personalization.
*Although my initial hypothesis revolved around optimizing the entire flow from searching for, to booking to managing trips, my research led me to focus on optimizing the trip management flow solely.
Empathize
Understanding Through Research
In order to understand our target audience, I needed to begin this project with conducting thorough research on who are users are, what our users need, and how that relates to the Just You platform in order to identify key areas of improvement.
EXPLORATORY RESEARCH
I began this project by conducting secondary research to learn more about the target audience, the online booking process for travel, and the goals and pain points of existing users in order to be able to craft interview questions to better understand our user and their journey.
KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS
Target Audience
Solo travelers make 18% of all global bookings, 76% of people want to travel alone regardless of age gender or nationality. 85% of solo travelers identify as female.
Digital Management of Trips
89% of solo travelers book online independently. The ability to book online is very important and significantly decreases customer drop off. In order to avoid high cart abandonment rates for online travel booking, you must make the booking process as easy and convenient as possible. Users expect a personalized experience when they book and manage travel online.
Solo Travel Concerns
Most concerns, especially for women, are around safety, costs and loneliness.
Multiple Destinations, Lodgings & Activities to Manage
The average solo trip length is 19 days often with multiple lodgings and activities in various cities.
Desktop vs. Mobile
While the preference of travelers is to book trips on a desktop, most users do all of their travel research on mobile beforehand. It’s easier to compare prices on a desktop where you can switch more fluidly between different websites.
Peer Recommendations
Younger travelers rely more on word of mouth to determine if a trip is worth it so it’s important to have reviews and a social media presence
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Using a feature matrix, I compared the Just You travel site to some of it's more popular and robust competitors (EF Go Ahead Tours and G Adventures) to gauge what additional features may be missing from the Just You platform that could benefit our users and add more customers.
Some key opportunities were found for Online Booking, Personal Dashboard, Social Features, Notifications, and Saved Trips features.
PRIMARY RESEARCH
Based on my research findings, I generated an interview discussion guide and recruited 4 interview participants to through a social media post that met at least one of the following criteria:
They have experiencing searching for, booking and managing trips online
They have experience traveling solo, or want to travel solo
Data Synthesis + Key Insights
Utilizing the responses from my users during the interview process, I synthesized the data using FigJam to create an affinity map where I identified patterns. I also incorporated elements of the user process and other platforms utilized in the travel booking process described by my users.
Define
USER PERSONAS
My research yielded two user personas who embodied the main goals, motivations, needs and pain points identified by my user interviews. These personas were at the forefront of my design.
MEET JEFF
Jeff is a budget traveler who is motivated to travel by experiences and values personalized recommendations based on his interests when planning a trip.
He is frustrated by inconsistent data across platforms and lengthy processes with too many steps.
He needs a single platform to organize his many activities.
MEET MICHELLE
Michelle is a frequent flyer who is motivated to travel by maximizing travel time and convenience.
She is frustrated by how long it takes to book & organize trips.
She needs an easier way to manage and organize the many trips she takes in a year and to learn about destinations from real people.
New Information & A Shift In Focus
While generating user flows based on my user personas and their needs, my project direction changed as I learned more about the Just You site from a European user who had the ability to book trips online with a European IP address.
When accessing the site from the U.S., this was not an option available to myself or my interviewees and therefore my assumption that online booking was not available was invalidated as it was available to some users dependent on their IP site address.
After discovering that the site does have opportunities for users to book directly through the digital platform for users in other countries through speaking to users outside of the US, I decided to focus primarily on the managing of trips element of the user journey rather than duplicating existing processes. The Just You site is set up is so that you select your tour and book an all-inclusive hotel + flight along with the tour, so while many of my user’s expressed interest in being able to have a more simple, easy, and personalized booking process, those types of design changes don’t fully align with this particular platforms business model. I will instead be focusing solely on creating a personalized dashboard for managing the trip and adding to the itinerary beyond what is already included in the tour outline in order to honor my user’s needs.
KEY FEATURES
Using the needs, goals, motivations and pain points of target users, I identified key features to address those pain points.
User Flow
I originally designed user flows including the searching for and booking processes as well, but following my discovery above and shift in focus to the trip management side of the flow, I revised the user flow to focus only on using the dashboard to manage trips while still meeting the needs of my users.
Ideate
Wireframes
After sketching out some ideas on paper, I took to Figma to design 3 key wireframe dashboard screens to allow my users to manage their booked trips. I opted to begin with a desktop frame in order to determine the best way to organize all of the visualized data points for users to interact with pertaining to their trips.
Design
UI Kit
I wanted to ensure that the dashboard would feel cohesive with the main Just You travel site branding, so I did my best to match the site branding as closely as possible in my design while creating all new dashboard elements for visualizing trip data.
Interactive Prototypes
I applied the UI Kit and branding to the wireframes to develop high-fidelity wireframes and create pathways to develop the interactive prototypes for testing.
Experience 1:
Viewing personalized recommendations & travel statistics
In navigating to the main dashboard, users will be able to view and access their personalized recommendations for tours based on recent trips as well as other recommended tours based on high ratings from fellow travelers. Users will also have access to their ongoing travel statistics for tracking their travel data over time.
Experience 2: Viewing trip details and trip calendar
Users will be able to select each trip individually to view and manage trip details, calendar and other interactive elements. Users can utilize the ‘My Trips’ icon on the navigation panel to view a list of trips. Opening each trip will bring you to the full trip screen.
Experience 3: Adding and categorizing locations of interest to the trip map
Users wanted to be able to add additional points of interest to the map of their trip with tags to differentiate and customize location categories. Users will be able to add locations to their map, search for the desired location, and add customized category tags to the location pin.
Experience 4: Adding items of interest to the trip itinerary
In addition to viewing their pre-planned itinerary for their tour, users wanted to be able to add additional items of interest to the itinerary of their planned trip with the option of adding these items to specific calendar dates if desired as well as adding their locations to the map.
Test
USABILITY TESTING
To validate my designed solution, I conducted usability testing on my interactive prototype to observe how users interacted with both the desktop and mobile versions of the travel dashboard. I asked 3 users in my target audience to complete the following tasks in order to determine what was working well and what may need to be improved for our users.
The Tasks
Test Feedback
Task Flow 1: Navigate from dashboard to ‘My Peru Trip’ panel
Task Flow 2: Add a location to the map with a custom label.
Task Flow 3: Add an item to the itinerary with a specific day of the trip.
To validate my designed solution, I conducted usability testing on my interactive prototype to observe how users interacted with both the desktop and mobile versions of the travel dashboard designed to meet user needs.
FEEDBACK GRID
I gathered user feedback and consolidated the responses into a feedback grid synthesizing data into what could be improved, user questions, user suggestions, and what worked well. I was delighted that each of my users were able to complete the task flow quickly and easily. I was pleased that my users had such positive feedback and felt their pain points from the interview process has been resolved. I noted all user confusions, questions and suggestions in order to determine next steps for iterations based on priority.
PRIORITIZATION GRID
In order to determine next steps in the iteration phase, I created a prioritization grid where I placed user feedback from testing onto a matrix of frequency and severity. This allowed me to identify which potential iterations were of the highest priority.
Iterate
High Priority Iterations
'Add Item’ Visibility
66% of users felt the ‘Add Item’ to itinerary button was not immediately visible. to address this, I will make the ‘Add Item’ to itinerary CTA more visible and clear so it draws the user’s eye to the action.
Mid Priority Iterations
Alternate Navigation to ‘My Trips’ Panel
33% of users wanted to be able to click through to the ‘My Trips’ panel of the dashboard using an alternate path that made more sense to them, which was from the ‘See all Trips’ button on the main dashboard rather than through the navigation panel using the ‘My Trips’ icon. To address this, I will add an interactive flow path from ‘See All Trips’ on the dashboard panel to the ‘My Trips’ panel.
Low Priority Iterations
Individual Travel Stats
33% of users felt having visible travel stats for individual tour pages (in addition to the long-term travel statistics listed on the main dashboard) would be nice to see. If I have time within the deadline, I will add travel stats to individual tour pages to address this.
ITERATIONS
Using prioritization analysis above, I iterated upon my high-fidelity prototypes. The highest priority iteration was making the 'Add Item' button more visible on the itinerary. I did this by using the same button style utilized for adding an item to the map on the itinerary for both desktop and mobile versions. I have highlighted the change in green.
I also added a shortcut to the interactive flow so you can click on 'See All Trips' to .get to the 'My Trips' panel, which would be a flow option with the shipped app but I had not included it initially as it was not integral to my task flow.
Final Prototype
View final interactive prototypes showcasing my final design.
Project Takeaways
LEARNINGS
Recognizing researcher bias in assumptions and thorough research
This project taught me the importance of recognizing researcher bias in assumptions and thorough research through my oversight of the process and capabilities being different for European users. During my initial testing, I was unable to book online through the site and identified this a major problem to solve per my research. Midway through my project, I learned from a European user that when accessing the site from a European IP address, booking online was actually possible. This new information changed everything and led me to refocus my project to the trip management side of the process given that the Just You platform provided all inclusive tours with flights and accommodations included. In the future I will be sure to consider how interactions with sites may differ from country to country, but my biases in my assumptions prevented me from thinking to look into this for this project.Flexibility
This mid-project refocus taught me the importance of being flexible in the design process and remaining open to other solutions. Although I wished I could have had all of this necessary information from the start of my project, I was grateful for the opportunity to respond to new data as it arose and to practice being flexible in my approach to ensure the user’s have what they truly need.Value of a mobile-first design approach
During the responsive designing process, I learned a lot about the value of a mobile-first design approach. Given that this was my first dashboard design which of course requires fitting a great deal of data visualization into a frame in an aesthetically pleasing and intuitive manner, I opted to start designing first on a desktop frame rather than designing a mobile frame first. While I initially thought this approach would help me to layout and incorporate all of the elements I hoped to include, in retrospect I felt that a mobile-first design actually would have been more advantageous in organizing all of the elements of my design. Following this project, I will be sure to approach responsive design from a mobile-first approach.
Overall I really enjoyed having the opportunity to design something that allowed me to provide users with a personalized, all-in-one platform that allowed them to organize and manage their trips all in one place. Thank you for taking the time to read my case study, if you have any feedback - don’t hesitate to reach out!