CASE STUDY
Group Trip Planning Responsive Website Design
Highlights
Tools
Figma, FigJam
Context
ChatGPT
Designlab Project
Introduction
OutBound is an innovative web platform optimized for both mobile and desktop interfaces, designed to simplify the complexities of group travel planning. This platform offers a holistic solution that helps to manage every aspect of group trip organization, from collectively brainstorming activities to tracking expenses, all within a single, user-friendly evironment.
The Problem
Planning a trip with a group of people can either be a walk in the park, or a logistical nightmare. As I happened to be involved in an upcoming girls trip to Las Vegas while simultaneously working on this case study, I experienced first-hand how coordinating collective schedules, preferences, and budgets has the potential to quickly turn joyful excitement into stress and frustration. Traditional methods of planning, such as fragmented group chats and scattered emails, lack efficiency and often lead to miscommunication. There are many factors that determine the success of group trips, and that’s what I aimed to discover and resolve through this project.
The Solution
Motivated by my personal experiences, I set out to create a website that enhances communication and coordination for group travel. This platform serves as a central hub for managing group chats, travel itineraries, and event calendars, among other elements. It empowers users to propose activities, cast votes, and collectively plan with as much structure or flexibility as they’d like, ensuring that everyone in the group has a voice in the planning process while easily staying informed. The ultimate aim of OutBound is to democratize group travel planning, making it an inclusive and enjoyable experience for everyone involved.
RESEARCH (DISCOVER)
Interview Research Plan
I interviewed five participants who have recently planned or participated in group trips, and made sure to include a range of ages, genders, and ethnicities.
I wanted to know what needs, obstacles, and preferences people have when planning group trips so that I could understand what features would be useful, user-centric, efficient, and valuable in a platform that streamlines the group trip planning process.
Research Objectives
Understand the main obstacles users face when planning group trips with existing methods or tools
Determine key features/functionalities that users deem essential for an effective group trip planning platform
Discover how group members communicate, coordinate, and make decisions when planning trips
Learn about any usability preferences users may have regarding digital trip planning tools
Research Questions
What methods or tools do users currently use for group trip planning and what are their biggest frustrations with these methods?
How do users handle disagreements or differing preferences when planning group trips?
Are there any features that come to users’ minds as something that would be incredibly useful or absolutely necessary in a group trip planning tool?
How do users finalize/book activities, accommodations, and travel logistics as a group?
Interview Research Findings
Primary User Goals
Some primary user goals that were found through user interviews were that users want to:
Streamline group communication
Facilitate collective decision-making
Efficiently manage and share expenses
User Pain Points
My research revealed a strong desire among users for a centralized group trip planning platform. Pain points largely revolved around:
Fragmented communication
Challenges in collective decision-making
Managing planned & spontaneous expenses
Challenges in accommodating varied preferences
Initial Interview Takeaways
Notably, users gravitated towards features that promoted visual planning, real-time collaboration, and tools to facilitate group consensus. It seems many resort to a patchwork of messaging apps, calendars, and expense trackers. While these tools serve their purpose, the need for a unified platform and intuitive platform that bridges gaps in communication, planning, and expense tracking is undeniable. While there are other patterns I found from research, these main goals and pain points listed above define my MVP moving forward. Some overall initial takeaways are:
Users want a more centralized trip planning platform
Decision-making tools and visual planning aids are crucial
There’s notable demand for integrated expense tracking
SYNTHESIZE (DEFINE)
Discovered Patterns & Themes
After synthesizing all my qualitative data from user interviews, there were quite a few patterns and themes that emerged. After my first round of categorizing into the 4 main groups, I thought the data was still too broad to adequately inform my future design choices, so I organized things further into more specific subcategories:
Synthesizing my data revealed a few patterns that helped me to create user personas. Here were my key discoveries and takeaways:
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Discovery: Users place a significant importance on efficient, clear, and smooth communication and collaboration when planning group trips.
Takeaway: Implementing a commenting or chat function would be instrumental in facilitating the large amounts of coordination needed when planning group trips.
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Discovery: Group members often have varying preferences, and making collective decisions can be a significant challenge.
Takeaway: I need to further explore voting/polling tools and look into possibly giving users the option to create sub-groups within a larger group based on specific interests.
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Discovery: Users would like to see a platform that is holistic, intuitive, and simplifies the ideation involved in the trip planning process.
Takeaway: To avoid the tendency for trip planning to require multiple tools and platforms, aim to create a "one-stop-shop", integrating things like a smart mapping tool, a dynamic search function, recommendations based on location and other users' experiences in those locations, etc.
Moving forward, I anticipated having to dive deeper into certain topics such as cost splitting tools, voting/polling tools, and availability-finding tools. I also wanted to explore how users might be notified about updates or changes in plans to improve overall group awareness and accountability. But in the interest of time and effectively integrating things like these into my design, I placed a mental emphasis on the need to understand what specific functionalities within these topics would be most useful and desirable.
Personas to POV & HMW Statements
Next, I created two distinct personas that each combined many different trending categories from my affinity mapping exercise.
Using my personas as a jumping-off point for empathizing with my target audience, I developed a set of “point of view” and “how might we” statements that were unique to each persona, highlighting the differences in user priorities depending on their unique goals and pain points.
In empathizing with Samantha Winters, they might prioritize…
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POV: I’d like to explore ways to help tripmates to facilitate centralized, efficient, and clear communication and collaboration because of the need for people in the group to be aware and mindful of the larger group plans and because fragmented conversations often lead to confusion .This will push individuals to develop some personal investment or accountability in the plans that have been collectively made.
HMW: How might we streamline communication and collaboration and ensure everyone is informed of the collective decisions and plans so that the potential for confusion and misunderstandings is reduced?
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POV: I’d like to explore ways to help group trip members to collectively coordinate activities in a structured yet flexible way because of the tendency of group members to break off and form subgroups due to varying preferences or interests. This will give subgroups the freedom to do what they want while still keeping the larger group informed so as to not impact the greater group plans.
HMW: How might we allow subgroups within a larger group to plan their own activities while still keeping the entire group informed so that individual preferences are respected without impacting the larger group?
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POV: I’d like to explore ways to help group travelers to efficiently vote or poll on desired activities because making collective decisions in large groups can often be challenging. This will ensure everyone has a say and will streamline the decision-making process.
HMW: How might we develop an efficient way for large groups of people to vote on desired activities so that collective decisions reflect the group’s majority interest?
In empathizing with Joseph Castillo, they might prioritize…
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POV: I’d like to explore ways to help group travelers to manage, share, and settle pre-booked and real-time expenses because misunderstandings and disputes over money can take away from the joy of shared experiences. This will simplify existing cost-splitting methods and add a level of accountability and transparency.
HMW: How might we design a way to track, manage, and share both pre-booked and real-time expenses so that we can empower each member to easily keep tabs on their individual shared costs?
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POV: I’d like to solve ways to help travelers explore activity options via a map feature, search functionality, and recommendations because people may not know what is popular in the area or what activities make sense to partake in due to travel time and proximity. This will provide a more visual way for people to propose ideas and plan logistically.
HMW: How might we assist people in exploring and proposing activity options based on location and popularity so that the group can get the most out of their travel experience?
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POV: I’d like to explore ways to allow tripmates to collectively share memories from their trips together because memories of shared experiences can bring groups of people closer together. This will provide a central place for tripmates to look back on memories that they weren’t able to capture themselves, and to efficiently share content with each other for posting to social media.
HMW: How might we make group trip reminiscing and content-sharing be like Google Photos so that memories are organized, shareable, and easily accessible?
Storyboarding
In another attempt to empathize with my two types of personas, I did a storyboarding exercise for each of them as shown below. While I’m not the best artist, drawing these storyboards by hand was a fun and refreshing change in tools; and not to mention, I came away being able to clearly pitch the practical need and use of OutBound in its early concepts.
Storyboard empathizing with Samantha
Storyboard empathizing with Joseph
IDEATE (DEVELOP)
Identifying Holistic Goals
I already had a clear idea of my project’s user goals, but identifying the business & technical considerations pushed me to think about the feasible and realistic side of implementing various features.
By this point, I had a pretty clear vision for how OutBound could impact both business and user goals:
Business ImpactGood collaborative functionality will give users a reason to share and to continue using the platform, increasing user retention and acquisition.
User ImpactThe common stresses involved with coordinating group trips will be reduced overall, allowing users to plan trips faster, more efficiently, and with minimal confusion and misunderstandings.
Prioritizing Features
After listing out all the features that would ideally be a part of the platform based on research findings and project goals, I narrowed down the list to identify the key features that would define my MVP. Those features were:
Collaborative itinerary builder
Centralized communication hub
Expense tracking & splitting system
Voting & polling for group activities
Information Architecture
While my sitemap was very thorough and comprehensive, I acknowledged that it would be very much open to change moving forward. Due to the scope of this project, I decided to focus my prototyping efforts on the Trip Planning Tool and Explore Tool sections, shown below in purple.
User & Task Flows
Now with my information architecture outlined, I created what I imagined would be a key user flow for my persona, Samantha. I imagined that her primary user flow might be to:
Initiate collaborative planning for an upcoming trip with friends and come up with a detailed and comprehensive group itinerary.
To complete this user flow, the user needs to complete a few tasks:
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Start a new trip in OutBound; from the “trip manager’s” POV, this involves managing the platform settings for the trip (trip dates & location, group settings to be 'free planning' or 'manager-restricted planning') & inviting trip-mates by adding their emails or phone numbers
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Add activities to the brainstorming section to collaboratively hash out with trip-mates what they do and don't want to do. This involves viewing activity ideas in a map view so users can get an idea of vicinity and feasibility, polling on options for a specific time/date, and commenting functionality for each added item
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Add new items to the itinerary and/or move items from the brainstorming section to the itinerary once the group has had the opportunity to collaborate and make decisions
Detailing out a few of the top priority task flows based on a persona’s primary user flow helped me to narrow down what parts of my information architecture I should be focusing on and identify what specific screens I’d need to create in order to eventually carry out user testing. The key screens that I concluded were part of the MVP and necessary for an adequately testable prototype were:
Trip planning screen
Window to add tripmates
Window to add itinerary items (both proposed & confirmed)
Budget tracking & expense sharing screen
Map view & search screen
Paper & Digital Wireframing
For my hand sketched wireframes, I focused only on the primary part of my platform, the trip planning screen, since this one main screen is quite complex on its own. I gave my hand sketches a great deal of thought since they are the fastest way to ideate digital layouts with low consequence and risk. I even had a chance to present my desktop sketches in a group critique and I received some crucial feedback - most notably:
The budget feature is essential, especially if activity items will have the option to add expenses
The map view seemed not so essential to those in my group critique. I hoped to explore this further in user testing
The activity log was a highly loved feature, mimicking the information sidebar that we see for shared folders in Google Drive
Values & Branding
As I developed the brand’s values, aesthetic, and visual design, I used this inspiring image that instills a sense of excitement for travel to create the color palette. Opting for the fonts Jost and DM Sans, I aimed for the brand to be minimalistic and instantly recognizable, making users feel like this is a platform they can trust.
IMPLEMENT (DELIVER)
First Iteration Usability Testing
Usability Testing At a Glance
After conducting 5 usability tests, one might say the OutBound product flows received a B+. Only one participant who was particularly tech-savvy gave the highest possible ratings for ease of use, task completion, intuitiveness, and satisfaction, while all other participants gave ratings in these areas that were between neutral and positive. This told me that, while the product did provide users with the intended solutions in group trip planning, it might not be as user-friendly and intuitive as it could be.
Gathering & Synthesizing Qualitative Data
Results Summary & Next Steps
Overall I discovered that, while my product did provide users with the intended solutions in group trip planning, it might not have been as user-friendly and intuitive as it could have been.
After synthesizing my qualitative feedback, I concluded that there were two main pain points that were non-negotiables for my next iterations:
The explore feature was not intuitive for the users to find in the interface
The itinerary feature is located too far down from the fold, causing problems for users in understanding where it was in the platform
Final Designs
Tying it all together in my high fidelity prototypes, I constantly reflected on my understanding of “good usability”. To me, this means bringing simplicity, intuitiveness, and efficiency to a design. Keeping these things at the forefront of my mind when designing helped me to avoid focusing purely on aesthetics and instead, prioritize the user goals and pain points that surfaced during my initial user research.
CONCLUSION
While I found that the technical and detail-oriented side of design (such as building on design systems and interactions) interests me the most, I learned that the experience matters far more than the visuals - just like how a set of structural plans are useless if they aren’t readable and user-friendly, a beautiful product design isn’t worth much to anyone if it doesn’t meet users’ expectations. With this project, I’ve learned that so much more goes into design planning than just visual and UI design techniques.
Looking back at this case study after having completed two more, I can see the beginnings of my journey in product design - where I started, the progress I’ve made, and the potential for future growth.
With this project being my first after shifting careers, I’m both proud of what I’ve created and acutely aware of how much room for improvement there is. This awareness is a testament to my development as a designer with an evolving understanding of user needs and project demands.