An Exploration of Backpackers and their Social Experiences — UX Case Study
We (my UX team of one) conducted UX research during my first semester in MICA’s UX Design program. Our user research was used to create an app that can help backpackers find their tribe and feel connected by using the power of technology. The goal was to provide backpackers with a way into their communities and to allow them to feel connected with the people around them.
Overview — Problem Framing Statement
The objective of our project was to enhance the community aspect of hostels and guesthouses, for both hosts and their guests; while considering differing personalities and travel styles, keeping in mind the many barriers such as language, lack of technology, and inexperience.
Our process involved exploring their emotions towards travel, what they found memorable about their experiences at hostels/guesthouses, and what they desire most.
We aimed to figure out what may have prevented someone from enjoying or participating in the community aspects of the hostel/guesthouse for those that had a desire to.
Project Details
- Duration — Spring Semester 2021 (15 weeks)
- Team members — just me!
- My role — UX research and designer
Assumptions Entering the Study:
- Guests may or may not be new to the hostel/guesthouse experience, yet are interested in meeting people within the hostel.
- Guests may be introverted or may not have time to meet the other guests when it’s most convenient.
- Guests are less likely to converse with someone who speaks another language.
- The existing bulletin board isn’t as useful as it could be.
- Guests would rather go out and meet people rather than sit behind a device.
Constraints
It is important to note the main constraints this project faced as these constraints had an impact on our results:
- Limited Time
Each step of the process needed to be completed in about a week or less due to course constraints and while working full time. - Limited Users
Due to limited time, the user group for both research and usability interviews featured a limited number of people (2–6), thus limiting the variety of insights. - Limited Research Methods
Due to the constraints of the course, interviews and affinity diagramming were requirements, with no time to explore additional methods, such as fly-on-the-wall observation. - Interviewing During Covid19
Inability to interview users in-person eliminated any insights that could’ve been gathered from in-person interaction.
Methodology
The design process is sometimes thought of as a linear process, but it’s not. It’s more like a circle, involving several iterations of going through the cycle, gathering feedback, and repeating the process again. Below is a high-level overview of the process that took place over the span of 15 weeks.
- Research — problem framing, research planning, recruiting, interviewing, secondary research
- Analysis — data collection and synthesis, user personas, findings summary
- Ideation — “How might we” statements, sprint maps, sketches
- Design — wireframes, interactive prototype, brand persona
- Feedback — usability testing
- Iterate — refinements from user testing
Research & Analysis Key Takeaways
Our research involved the following methods:
- Secondary research — We conducted secondary research, or desk research, to explore the key areas that make hostels and guesthouses stand apart from traditional accommodations, how guests may interact with one another and their host(s), and the importance of such communication practices in hostel/guesthouse accommodations.
- Interviewing — We interviewed 5 participants, 2 of which had worked in a hostel while the others discussed their experiences while staying in a hostel, and explored topics such as pain points and what they enjoyed about their experiences. Our questions were mostly open-ended to gain an understanding of each participant’s world review, ensuring that we were not introducing our own biases.
We then summarized and synthesized our data to gather our key insights.
Affinity Diagramming
Our raw notes and artifacts from each interview were synthesized using Affinity Diagramming. Affinity Diagramming allowed us to cluster our notes into meaningful insights using the “bottom-up” approach. This approach prevents us from predefining categories and allows the categories to form solely based on the patterns created by the data.
Here were our 13 clusters at a high level:
- “I value the connections I’ve made during my hostel/guesthouse experience.”
- “I try to make the staff and information accessible, however, it’s hard to be everywhere at once.”
- “I want my guests to feel comfortable and welcomed as a friend.”
- “There are guests I don’t want to interact with unless absolutely necessary.”
- “I’m very interested in immersing myself in the culture by seeing how people live, meeting locals, etc.”
- “I would be reluctant to spend extra money if I didn’t have to.”
- “The hostel creates a fun environment for socializing if the guests choose to do so.”
- “I rely on apps and online services, though the wireless ability needed may not be reliable.”
- “Hostels may not be as ‘nice’ as a hotel, but I still prefer them based on my positive experiences.”
- “I need a more passive way to meet other guests for when I’m too tired or nervous to engage in social activities like games and events.”
- “I’m aware and empathetic to the fact that much of the world is catered towards English-speakers and that their experience may not be as advantageous as mine.”
- “There are many different travel styles based on one’s lifestyle and comfort level, even for the purpose of cultural immersion.”
- “I would be interested in a solution that accommodated the varying wants and needs of my guests in order to give them a unique experience.”
User Personas
We created 2 user personas from our data to help us visualize our users' goals, needs, and behaviors and to foster empathy between us and the end-user.
- Shauna: The Somewhat Frequent, Somewhat Confident Hostel Guest
Shauna often travels for work domestically, but about once a year, she gets to travel internationally. She mostly travels with friends, with an occasional solo trip. She hopes to travel solo more internationally. While traveling, she is eager to meet new people, but after a long day of being out and about, she’d rather head to her room. When she does have the time to hang around, she’s just too shy. She’d rather someone else approach her first.
2. Harold: The Been There Done That Traveller
Harold travels internationally about 3 times a year. At one point, he spent a year backpacking. His favorite locations are within Latin America, but he’s been all over. He prefers traveling alone. He rarely travels with friends, but when he does, he’s seen as the “travel expert” of the group. He’d rather engage with the local people, rather than group up with other travelers. When he first started off, he was interested in meeting up with like-minded travelers to do activities, but not so much anymore.
What our research told us
- Communication barriers — The main culprit of communication barriers isn’t always differing languages. A person can have a desire to meet other people but are unable to work up the courage to.
- Meeting other hostel guests — Our research showed that while someone may have a strong desire to meet new people, they may not care to mingle with the other guests. They may want to meet other locals or guests from a nearby hostel.
- The staff — There was a mutual consensus that the hosts/staff were genuinely friendly and cared about the best interests of their guests, some even becoming lasting connections.
- The culture — We wanted to make sure our solution didn’t take away from the hostel/guesthouse culture.
Ideation
Our research yielded many opportunities for us to work through to solve our users’ problems. We decided to narrow our focus using “How Might We” statements and sketches.
“How Might We” Statement
“How Might We” (HMW) statements are small but mighty questions that allow us to reframe our insights into opportunity areas and innovate on problems found during user research. — dscout.com
We created several “How Might We” statements and decided to hone in on the following:
How might we help guests work up the courage to meet new people when staying at a hostel or guesthouse?
Choosing a single “How Might We” statement allowed us to focus on a single problem and goal to solve for.
Sketches
Sketching is a great way to turn our abstract ideas into something concrete. During this phase, we explored various concepts
- including a digital noticeboard
- a way to signal you’re in a common area and looking for friends
- an app for private messaging within the hostel.
We decided the explore the digital noticeboard concept a bit deeper and created additional sketches using the Crazy 8s technique.
Wireframes
Using our sketches of the noticeboard, we created low-fidelity wireframes with annotations to convey our idea.
Iteration 1: The Digital Noticeboard
A noticeboard is often used as a way for staff to communicate announcements to hostel guests. Our initial prototype aimed to simulate this common, though not so often used, aspect of hostel and guesthouse accommodations. We used Unity as our working title and incorporated a simple design system into our high fidelity wireframe.
Goal — to focus on users learning about the people around them
But users commented the following:
- “Is that [question post] an ad?”
- “I don’t care about the people at my hostel.”
- “How can I filter the stuff I don’t want to see? I don’t know John.”
- “Can I see what other hostels are up to?”
Key Insights from User Testing
- Users want to feel empowered to learn more about the people around them.
- Enhance the way users can find, sort, and filter through information.
- Users expressed interests in not being isolated to who they can meet within the hostel.
Recommendations
The following assumptions were disproven:
- Users don’t seem to mind if an app exists that changes the traditions of
the hostel/guesthouse experience. - Just because the user is staying at a hostel/guesthouse and is very
interested in meeting others, doesn’t mean they care about those within
the confines of the accommodation.
Takeaways:
- We should reconsider the hostel/guesthouse’s role in this solution
- Consider that the overall social experience in the area adds value to the
hostel/guesthouse experience.
Next Steps:
Using these learnings, we will refine our prototype and continue with the next phase of the ideation process.
Iteration 2: Introducing Tribe
We took our insights from our previous iteration with Unity and went back to the drawing board. What we came up with is what we now call “Tribe.”
The name came directly from a quote from one of our user testers:
“I want to find my Tribe.”
From there, we put our focus on how the backpacker community may digitally interact with one another, removing the restriction of communicating with others within the hostel or guesthouse accommodation and including the possibility of meeting locals and expats in the area.
Read how I created the branding for Tribe in A Comprehensive Guide to Creating Mood Boards for Brand Identity and UX Design Projects
Improved Onboarding
We decided to put a focus on the onboarding experience. No more ties to the hostel.
We added the following refinements:
- Explore any city you want.
- Filter through the tags you’re interested in.
Improved Noticeboard
After onboarding, you’re taken to the home screen, which is our digital noticeboard from the first iteration of the app. Now, the hostel, that you may or may not be staying in, has a less prominent position and the posts are more user-driven for backpackers to meet one another.
Key refinements include:
- See who’s going where and when
- Custom call-to-actions so users can continue using the communications methods they like best (like groups in WhatsApp)
Improved Profile Page
We put our focus on the profile page so users can see what they have in common with one another.
- Connect with others.
- See what you have in common.
- Learn how well they know the region.
- Passively receive tips on where to go based on their favorite places.
- Gauge their community status with badges.
- View their posts.
Reflections
The concepts I learned during these 15 weeks as well as feedback from my classmates were crucial in helping me to carry out this user research as a Team of One.
Getting into the user’s worldview really fostered creativity — Strong emphasis was put on fostering the interviewees' worldview during the research phase of the project. This ensures that I am getting the user’s insights without my personal biases.
More research would be beneficial— Due to the pandemic, the interviews conducted had to focus on experiences that happened in the past rather than the present. There would have been great value in being able to visit a few hostels and a few guesthouses to observe how everyone interacts with one another, and to see firsthand how the accommodation fosters community.
References
- Secondary Research in UX — https://www.nngroup.com/articles/secondary-research-in-ux/
- Affinity Diagramming for Collaboratively Sorting UX Findings and Design Ideas — https://www.nngroup.com/articles/affinity-diagram/
- How Might We — https://www.designkit.org/methods/3
- Sprint by Jake Knapp — https://www.thesprintbook.com/
- Universal Methods of Design by Bella Martin and Bruce Hanington — https://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Universal-Methods-Design-Innovative/dp/1631593749/ref=pd_lpo_3?pd_rd_i=1631593749&psc=1
- The User Experience Team of One by Leah Buley — https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/the-user-experience-team-of-one/
