Morii

Creating a trip planning mobile app.

Project Overview

  • Role

    Product Designer

  • Timeline

    6-weeks

  • Team

    Brittany Jain

  • Product

    A trip planning mobile app that is personalized to the user’s needs, helping them plan their best travel experiences.

  • Problem

    Imagine you’ve just been hired as a product designer for a new startup. The startup’s goal is to build a modern-day mobile app that helps people plan their next trip.

  • Goal

    To build a personalized trip planning app.

User Research

1:1 Interviews

With a goal of understanding how people feel about and approach trip planning, I conducted five 1:1 interviews with people who travel at least one week per calendar year.

Research Findings

After consolidating my research notes into an affinity diagram I summarized my findings. Two findings stood out in particular: 1.) Users take vastly different approaches to trip planning (ex: some months in advance, some days) and 2.) Recommendations from fellow travelers help trip planners make decisions & plan quickly.

Competitive Analysis

Through my competitive analysis, I discovered that current apps in the trip planning space were treating all users the same and providing cookie cutter solutions. An opportunity area I was excited to provide a solution for.

Personas

After conducting my research, I defined three distinct personas based on traveler habits, beliefs and expectations. Since there was significant variation in how people approached traveling, I recognized that in order for an app to be successful in this space it had to offer personalized experiences. these key areas.

The Travel Enthusiast

The travel enthusiast needs help prioritizing travel content to view because they can spend hours trip planning.

The Procrastinator

The procrastinator needs to be able to quickly plan trips because they often wait until the last minute which causes them to sometimes miss out on experiences.

The Risk Averse-Couple

The risk averse couple needs reassurances when booking travel because they are often anxious about their trips.

Problem Statement

How might we create a personalized experience that enables trip planners to travel & therefore explore humanity?

Strategy

Desktop Wireframes

With this design, Amelia can easily navigate to & find the content she is looking for. With reviews & a compare feature, the decision making process is easier. By simplifying the user experience, Amelia may be more likely to return the NPS to find educational content about parks.

User Scenario

Angi, a traveler with less than 2-week before her upcoming trip to Hawaii, uses Morii to finish planning her trip.

Morii first notices that Angi’s trip is rapidly approaching and she still has an incomplete to do list so it suggests she switch to procrastinator mode. 

From procrastinator mode, she is guided to first update her to do list, then begin working on completing items from her checklist by finding activity ideas from shared itineraries. Angi then is able to add recommended activities to her own itinerary, saving her time.

Wireframes on mobile

I felt it was important to make the website responsive because I imagined teachers browsing content while on the go, perhaps at night before bed or on their commutes home.

Clearly communicates various options of navigating the educators microsite

A closer look

Redesigned search with updated filters 

Outlines process for educators to get published by sharing their National Parks lesson plans

Key content above the fold

Reviews to help users determine if the content is right for their classroom

Ability to compare lesson plans to alleviate decision making fatigue

Content organization and grouping to make it easier for users to scan content and expand when needing more details

Prototype & Test

Usability Test Results

I conducted a three usability tests of my desktop low-fidelity prototypes, in addition to three five-second homepage tests. With feedback, I iterated on my designs.

Final Designs

The desktop prototype

The mobile experience

Retrospect

Impact

“I found the redesigned national park service website to be easy to use, simple to navigate and well-organized. I like that I can see other teacher’s reviews and imagine that comparing lesson plans might be very helpful.” - User Tester

Lessons Learned

I learned that I always want to iterate! Iteration really helps to evolve and improved the design through gathering feedback. Also, the visual design choices you make greatly impact the overall design.

Next Steps

I would like to do research on what the process for educators to share lesson plans should look like and how users might use the compare feature. I’d also like to continue exploring color palettes that are accessible and best represent the national parks service.