UX/UI Case study: VOYAY — Travel Planner App

Voyay is a travel planning app for those who love traveling with friends or family.

OVERVIEW

The Scope

An app that offers convenient group travel planning to make the process easier and more enjoyable, even when traveling with large groups. Aiming to provide a fun experience for everyone involved in planning the trip.

About project

VOYAY focuses on supporting group travel planning, helping people exchange information, and updating trip schedules more effectively, suitable for many different forms of group travel.

The platform encourages everyone to plan and experience the trip together in the most pleasant, fast, and fulfilling way.

Problem

In recent years, self-planned tours have become increasingly popular, and their popularity has doubled compared to before the pandemic. These tours offer several advantages, including the ability to choose your destination and schedule, manage your travel budget more effectively, and explore the local area freely. However, planning a self-guided tour for a large group can be complicated and time-consuming. To ensure everyone has a comfortable and enjoyable experience, a comprehensive and user-friendly application is necessary.

Solution

Voyay offers a range of features that allow users to access all necessary information in one place, eliminating the need to switch between multiple platforms. This makes it easier for users to exchange information, combine content, and update schedules for their entire group.

Additionally, Voyay is a community where users can share their travel itineraries with others, enabling everyone to create their own exciting trip.

My Role

UX Research, UI Design, Brand Identity

DESIGN PROCESS

For this project, I utilized Design Thinking process to gain insight into people’s needs, thought processes, and behaviors.

By focusing on these aspects of actual users, ideas were developed. Here Empathy served as the guiding principle for all efforts.

Empathize

Focus Area

In my user research, I aimed to address the following concerns:

• Understand how users plan group trips and their behavior during this process.
• Identify which app features are essential for trip planning and gather user feedback on their experiences with these features.
• Evaluate how users utilize group travel planning tools and identify any issues or challenges they may encounter.

In order to gain a comprehensive and truthful understanding of the issues that people are dealing with, I carry out user research through two methods:

• Interviews and surveys.

User Interview

I conducted an interview with 6 participants who have different user profiles, including students and office workers. The aim was to determine the essential products and features people use for planning group travel.

Through these interviews, I gained a deeper insight and re-evaluated my previous biases and assumptions.

Pre-interview biases/assumptions:

• People have difficulty scheduling due to a lack of information suggestions
• People want more travel recommendations from different places (e.g., TikTok, Facebook, web, reviews)

What is verified:

• People want a lot of travel recommendations from many places but tend to find suggestions with reviews and sample schedules.

What was refuted:

Scheduling can be challenging for people, not because of the absence of suggested itineraries, but due to other factors such as

• Too many different opinions, which makes it challenging to vote.
• Difficult in updating the schedule continuously (e.g., lost text messages, new members being added later)
• Hard to exchange and store files (too much or scattered information)

When planning a new trip, I aim to collaborate with everyone to ensure that their needs are met, and to make the trip planning process a pleasant experience for all involved.

Survey

I conducted a user survey to collect data on users’ habits, difficulties, and desires in travel planning apps.

• Most people usually travel with friends, in groups of 3–4 people, and plan quite well before traveling.

• Budget is the biggest concern and the need for communication when planning is high, making group chat and multi-editing a top priority.

• 74.5% of respondents feel that moving between multiple apps is the biggest obstacle.
• Second is the negotiation of criteria and collecting information (64.7% and 47.1%).

Competitive Analysis

Upon reviewing various group planning apps, I have discovered that although most of them have basic travel planning functions, they lack specific features for group planning, such as sharing locations in chat and saving files in texting to prevent message loss. This can make it challenging for users to collaborate with friends. Additionally, some apps require additional information and may not offer the necessary features to fully support group travel planning.

Pain point

From there, I can draw some pain points users might encounter.

DEFINE

Persona

To better understand the needs of different user groups, creating personas can be helpful. Through user research surveys, I categorize individuals into three main groups based on their lifestyle and psychology, also known as psychographic segmentation.

• Self-planned travel group
• Backpack travel group
• Family travel group

Empathy Map

What do these target groups think? How does what they see and hear influence their decisions? What would their actions be?

User Behaviour

After conducting the research, I created a User Behavior Flow for each group of users. While the order may be different, the steps to establish time, location, and activities are consistent across all groups.

User Journey Map

The User Journey for preparing for a group trip is mapped based on the activities that a person is likely to go through. It’s important to note that this journey is not a linear path and may vary depending on the flexibility of the travel plans.

Problem Statement

Through research, I have determined that users require assistance in the areas of planning, communication, and multitasking when organizing travel. Some questions that have arisen include:

How can users effectively communicate with friends to create a cohesive itinerary?

Is it possible to quickly edit and update the itinerary with input from everyone on the team?

How are trip documents organized and stored?

Can users share or copy schedules to create their own trips?

IDEATE

Key feature

From the above analysis, I draw the following main features for my app.

Sitemap

Sitemap includes categories of Trips, Search, Create New, Explore, and finally, Messages to optimize communication in the group when planning.

User Flow

And finally, User flow of users using the app before traveling (group planning); and during and after traveling.

Prototype

Wireframe

After using the insights gained from research and analysis, wireframes are created.

Test

Usability Study

A Usability Study was conducted to identify areas that could be improved and fixed.

Design

Branding

VOYAY is a word that combines “Voyage” and “Yay” to express excitement. The app’s tagline, “Yay for Vacay!” is represented by a vivid smiley face image created using the first two letters “VO”.

This app is primarily designed for young and active individuals who love to explore. Therefore, the design should reflect a cheerful and youthful vibe.

I use vibrant and cheerful images, accompanied by fun illustrated characters that are suitable for different types of viewers.

UI Kit

Prototype

See my the project’s prototype here

On the Trips page, users can create a new Trip or choose to create a Guide if they want to share their travel itinerary.

When creating a trip, there are three main sections:

Itinerary — Dropit — Budget.

The Itinerary section allows everyone to edit and track the group’s schedule, including the location, date, and time. You can easily add new places or use the app’s suggestions based on your previous choices. You can also set reminders, add notes, or get information about the location you just added.

Each trip has a chat bubble in the right corner where all members can discuss and suggest ideas. You can save chat information to Dropit’s files or add it directly to the group’s Itinerary.

The Dropit section serves as a storage for trip information. Users can create various files where other members can add additional content such as suggested locations, web links, or images related to the trip. These files are well-organized, easy to track, and can be updated by all group members.

In case there are too many suggestions, members can vote on the most popular choices, which will then be included in the group’s itinerary.

In the Budget section, you can easily set budgets for your group trip, keep track of expenses, and stay informed about any updates. To add expenses, simply input the relevant information and attach receipts within the app. If your group surpasses the estimated budget, the app will alert everyone to make necessary adjustments together.

After creating a full itinerary for your group, you can use the Map feature to review the locations visually. This will help you determine if the route and order of the places you have planned makes sense. Once you are satisfied, you can export the itinerary to Google Maps for easier navigation during your travels.

On the Message page, you can easily and efficiently communicate with your friends. You can view information about them, call them on the phone, and even share your location if they are having trouble finding you.

On the Explore page, you can find sample itineraries and guides that have been shared by other users. This makes it easy for you to search for places and reference sample guide schedules for your own trip.

You can create a Guide from your past travel itinerary. These Guides will be updated on VOYAY’s Explore page for everyone to view. Guide information will include interesting places and general instructions from the author. You can easily comment, share, and save the guide to Dropit or copy it to create your itinerary.

CONCLUSION

Reflection

Creating the VOYAY app was both difficult and fulfilling for me. The biggest obstacle was ensuring that sharing information and scheduling among group users was seamless and effortless. To achieve this, I had to study the habits and characteristics of various user profiles. By conducting surveys and chats, I was able to gradually comprehend the wants and needs of users. Ultimately, I was challenged to develop an app that was visually appealing and engaging for users to use.

Lessons Learned

This project has taught me the significance of UX research and the design process. I have gained knowledge on different aspects of app design, including data collection methods like interviews, surveys, and indirect research. Additionally, I have learned how to analyze the collected data and test the app’s usability to develop full features.

This experience has given me a thorough understanding of the design process, honed my problem-solving skills, and improved my ability to clearly communicate complex concepts. Moving forward, I hope to continue to develop my knowledge of UX/UI through future opportunities, as it will provide a solid foundation for my UX/ designing path.