Nomads
CASE STUDY
Role
Branding
UX Research
UI Design
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Tools
Axure
THE CHALLENGE
42% of Americans say they can't afford a vacation
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How might we make traveling more affordable yet comfortable, while creating beautiful life changing experiences?
THE SOLUTION
An all inclusive travel website that would offer work exchange, bartering of skills against food and lodging, and offer comfortable lodging for regular stays.
THE PROCESS
Following the Design Thinking process, the following steps were applied to create this product
User research > Competitive analysis > User flows > Wireframes > UI design
THE RESEARCH
After interviewing Gen Z college students and millennials, here is a synthesis of the main pain points that came up.
Too many redirections from one website to the other
Too much personal information required
Wishing all services (flights, stay, activities) were in one place to keep records
Lack of consistency across websites for same item
Confusing amount of information
Lack of transparency / too many hidden fees
From the research, a couple of user personas were created that represented the audiences interviewed: a college student and a millennial. These personas, their needs, goals and frustrations, became the foundation for building the product from beginning to end.
We were able to get a deeper understanding of our users by creating journey and empathy maps based on the interviews and the personas, to better understand their wants and needs.
Looking at direct and indirect competitors allowed us to get a grasp of what already works and what needs to be "upgraded" for a better user experience. This competitive analysis also gave insight for branding and art direction.
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This step also helped put emphasis on the importance of building an accessible platform.
USER FLOWS
An all inclusive travel website that would offer work exchange, bartering of skills against food and lodging, and offer comfortable lodging for regular stays.
FONT AND COLORS
Aa
Montserrat
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
#9EE8E8
#2DCDD7
#111636
#FBAA00
#90BE6D
#F16B52
WALK THROUGH
Studies show that the attention span of Gen Z and Gen Y varies from 8 to 12 secs.
The goal was then to keep the home page, the first point of contact, very simple and minimalistic. This was to ensure our users would stay on the page and want to interact with it.
Accessibility features, such as voice recorder and language menu, were added for quick access.
To address to the personas pain points, the work exchange results page offers a small amount of results, paired with the ability to browse, bookmark and share results without having to log in or input any personal information
Once the user finds a result that spikes their interest, they are then redirected to the information page to see all of the works specifics and other useful information.
Because some our our personas's frustrations had to do with too much information, we tried keeping the amount of data concise with "Read more" buttons that would allow for more information to be displayed.
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A sticky submenu that has anchors across the page, and side menu with host's information, "apply"button and the ability to change dates, offers flexible options for the user
Our user would then "Apply" to the work-exchange position. The application process would be done by sending the user's profile to the host for review in order to minimize the amount of information required and incentivize our user to create an account.
For our first time user, the pop-up is then turned into a "create account" pop-up, where a very minimal amount of information is required to sign-up and have the application sent to the host.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Through the creation of this first phase of the project, stemmed several areas of opportunities:
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Interviews would have to be conducted to better understand the hosts needs and frustrations
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The question of safety arose once more, for both parties. How does the website ensures safety of the traveler and the host, while keeping the amount of personal information required minimal?
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The ability to book flights directly on the site would target our persona's need to have all services gathered into one platform; this is then a feature that would need to be added at a later time.