Microtripper
Microtripper is an iOS application I took from concept to high fidelity prototype over the course of 4 months during my Springboard UX Design course.
My Role and Process
As a UX team of one, I wore many hats. I was responsible for every step of the design process.
Research
Research plan
User interviews
Heuristic evaluation
User research
Prototyping and Validation
Guerrilla testing
Usability testing
Low- and high-fidelity prototypes
User test reports
Analysis
Affinity mapping
Empathy mapping
Persona creation
Visual Design
Mood board
Style guide
High fidelity mock-ups
Ideation
User stories
User flows
Sketching and wireframing
The Challenge
Planning a vacation can feel like a full time job. Even day and weekend trips take a surprising amount of effort to plan. We have access to more information than ever, but it’s hard to know which sources are worthwhile.
I investigated how I could reduce decision fatigue when weekend trip planning, and help people discover cities near them.
User Interviews
I wanted to learn more about how people currently plan weekend trips, and what they liked and didn’t like about the process. I interviewed 5 people and analyzed the results, using an affinity map to find patterns in the data.
Learnings
1. Interest-based search
Every person I spoke with started their short trip research by searching for a particular activity or interest, such as hiking or breweries. Many expressed disdain for generic recommendations in typical “Top 10” lists.
2. No app loyalty
People tend to start with a Google search, or look at Google maps. They don’t favor any apps or services in particular, and few could name a travel app that they really love.
3. People take short trips often
Most of the people I spoke with take a weekend trip about once per month. Those that traveled less often suggested once per month as an ideal cadence.
4. Decision fatigue is common
The sheer volume of decisions and considerations to contend with can be overwhelming. Nearly half of millennial travelers cite travel research as one of their biggest stresses.
5. Nature is a prime motivator
Every person I spoke with mentioned “hiking”, “camping”, or “parks” as something they already planned trips around or would like to see as a filter option.
Principles
Taking what I had learned from my interviews and research, I chose a set of qualities that my app should embody. This was a huge help in guiding my brainstorming sketches.
Search results should feel like suggestions from a friend.
When deciding on a trip destination, people often turn to friends for advice. You trust their opinion, and they can make suggestions based on what they know about you. The trip suggestions should feel personal.
The app should answer most of their questions about a destination.
People feel that there is too much information out there to sift through, and most of it is low quality. Microtripper's content should be thorough and detailed enough that users won't have to do much subsequent research. Otherwise, the app doesn't meet its goal of making planning easier.
Remove decisions whenever possible.
I wanted to do everything I could to reduce the number of decisions required, and make the app feel really effortless. If I could adjust the interface in a way that reduced one required decision, I should. For example, I decided to return only the top 3 most relevant destinations.
Scoping the MVP
I had many ideas for features to include, but I needed to pare the app down to a focused MVP. Ultimately, the goal of the application is to find places to go, so I prioritized building a solid recommendation flow and limiting everything else to the bare minimum.
User stories
To prioritize features, I wrote up a list of User Stories and ranked them based on importance vs. difficulty. My persona was a helpful resource during this process. I asked myself, ‘Would Ramona care about this?’
Prototyping and Validation
It was critical to get my sketches in front of users as quickly as possible to identify gaps and usability issues early in the process. This would save countless hours later reworking the high-fidelity designs. I ran three rounds of usability tests at various stages of fidelity, iterating between rounds.
Testing questions
Round 1
Do users understand the value proposition?
Are they able to complete a series of basic tasks?
Rounds 2 & 3
Are the usability issues from the previous round resolved?
Findings
It wasn’t clear what search would produce.
In the first iteration, users thought they would see activities near them.
Following Steve Krug’s advice to “try to do the least you can do” to fix problems, I added “See cities” and “Explore a city” to the UI. Subsequently, users thought they selected a target city and a duration of time to spend there.
I realized a larger change was necessary, and added a visual aid in the form of a map with a radius. With this change, every tester understood the concept right away.
It is possible to go too minimal.
Testers had lots of questions about the search results.
How are these sorted? How many results are there? How do the tags relate to each search result? How far away exactly are these places?
I iterated on the design to provide more context for each search result.
New search patterns emerged.
During usability tests, people offered tons of interesting details about how they might use search:
Tweak interest tags and driving distance to see how result list changes
Save custom searches for different types of trips (hiking with dogs vs. museums and shopping with friends)
Save a default search to use every time
I opted to make the search parameters a clickable link, to make it easier to iterate on your search.
Visual Design
I chose a nature theme because reconnecting with nature is a major motivator for weekend trips. Every person I interviewed mentioned hiking or camping, and nearly all of the user testers mentioned "hiking" or "parks" as interests they would expect to see in the application.
I wanted to evoke the feeling of walking through a quiet forest: mysterious, and full of possibilities.
Style guide sample
Mood Board
Introducing Microtripper
Microtripper is an iOS application that offers personalized suggestions for weekend or day trips in just a few taps.
My vision
My vision for Microtripper is a resource for personalized and curated content, not another Google Maps or TripAdvisor. I didn’t want to offer the user an exhaustive list of options, but rather a customized, distilled one. I envision the future of travel planning as supportive of unique, DIY experiences.
Features
Share with friends
Share listings with your friends to easily coordinate planning.
Interactive maps
See the search results on a map to quickly compare locations. Zoom and drag to explore the area.
Quality content
City content and photography are curated to ensure you only see the most relevant, informative content.
Save and customize cities
Add a note to a saved city to keep track of any useful bits of information: other places to visit, who to take or when to go, or a comment about why you saved the place.
What I Learned
The purpose of each screen should be obvious at a glance.
Be mindful of making important clues obvious enough. And definitely don’t rely on people reading every line of text, they will skim it.
Respect common conventions.
My components that followed standard iOS conventions tested flawlessly. Standards exist for a reason. Following common platform conventions saves a lot of headache as a designer; people feel much more comfortable and confident using familiar controls.
Just because it seems simple doesn’t mean it is.
“You are not your users” is one of the most fundamental tenets of UX design, but this project reaffirmed it for me. All of my previous experience involved testing a very technical product, so I expected new users to have a learning curve. Because Microtripper seemed so simple to me, I was surprised that even seemingly simple concepts can be interpreted differently.