TriPlan

A user-centric travel planning platform, connecting travelers and independent providers.

Projects Overview

Triplan, a collaborative effort during my participation in the UX-Land bootcamp, is a website designed to personilize and enhance the travel planing experience.

Streamlining transactions among independent travel hosts (small-scale businesses or individual providers of travel adventures) and travelers, Triplan primarily functions as a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) platform.

Moreover, Triplan serves as an intelligent, personalized travel planner, crafting tailored journeys based on users' preferences and constraints such as timeframe, budget, and desired activities. Users can optimize their daily itineraries throughout their trips with Triplan.

View Prototype

BUSINESS TASK:

Creating a travel app/website focused on personalized planning by connecting users with trusted local travel and adventure providers.

TARGET USERS:

Triplan acts as a bridge between these two groups of users:

Travelers: Users who in the process of planning their trips and are looking for personalized experiences.
Travel Providers: Small-scale travel businesses, including local tour operators and rental hosts, seeking connection with a wider audience.

BUSINESS OBJECTIVES (VALUE PROPOSITION):

Provide uniquely tailored trip planning experiences.

Offer comprehensive information and convenient access to essential travel resources, including up-to-date destination options, local adventures, travel deals, maps all in one user-friendly platform.

Facilitating increased visibility and engagement for small private travel provider such as local tour guides, accommodation hosts, and adventure operators.

OUR APPROACH:

Float surveys to comprehend travelers' needs.

Interviews to gather insights into travelers concerns and requirements.

Comparative studies of existing platforms.

Design Process

Discover

TRAVELERS SURVAY

To gather valuable feedback and tailor Triplan to traveler needs, a survey has been crafted. The survey offered crucial insights into trip planning preferences, desired features, platform pain points, and expectations from a travel planning tool like Triplan.

The following feedback significantly shaped our team's thoughts about Triplan.

SURVAY RESULTS

Also significant trend towards preferring online platforms for travel planning was observed among a considerable portion of respondent.

Travelers' Challenges:

Limited online information
Difficulties in connecting with travel providers

Travelers' Top Priorities:

Saving money
Convenient booking experiences
Seeking authentic experiences

INTERVIEW AND AFFINITY DIAGRAM

Competitive Analysis

We conducted a review of various travel websites, evaluating key features. This included wishlist options, special deals, budget customization, website and app availability, user reviews, booking capabilities, scheduling tools, AI integration, transportation assistance, search functionality, and tracking features.

Key Insights:

Transparency, reliabille reviews are are key features on most websites.
These platfroms prioritize diverse search features for adventure discovery and planning.
Transportation booking is NOT a primary focuse of travel planning platforms
The majority of platforms offer both app and website options.
User experience in the planning phase is a key focus for most platforms, emphasizing clear navigation and easy information retrieval.

Based on interviews conducted with 8 potential users and subsequent affinity diagram analysis, the following emerged as top priorities for users:

Easy scheduling.
Flexibility (including Free Cancellation).
Personilized travel planning.

Diverse options and availability.
Easy comparison between options.

Reliable user reviews.
Transparency.
Comprehensive provider information.

Offers and promotions.
Loyalty programs.
Customer service.

Open Card Sorting

Based on interviews, affinity diagrams, surveys, and analysis of similar platforms, our team has developed a set of cards. Each card contains unique pieces of data, functionalities, or features that our research has shown to crucial for the Triplan platform.

To comprehend how travelers organize information, we conducted an Open Card Sorting technique. Participants categorized these cards in a way that made sense to them, informing our design decisions regarding navigation systems, information architectures, and content organization for digital platforms.

After careful review of users' card sorting, our team identified the above categories and associated functionalities as the initial steps in developing a site map.

Define

Persona

Emily Carlson | 35 Years old | HR Manger | Married

Emily's Needs:

Requires travel planning tailored to her needs.
Prefers flexible and diverse options.
Simplified booking experience.
Support and assistance during booking/planning.

Emily's Problems:

Lack of reliable information on regional travel providers.
Budget concerns.
Trip planning is a time-consuming task for her.

Challenges:

Finding a travel option aligning with her work-life situation.
Planning day-to-day travel itineraries in advance.

Expectations:

Attention to her preferences for travel.
Seamless travel planning experience.
Authenticity and quality of the provided services.

Travelers Flow

Our team developed a user flow for traveler users, including multiple tasks. For this exercise, the focus was placed on just couple of tasks. The back arrows indicate the main task flows we designed, while the gray arrows represent potential future tasks not developed for this exercise.

Site Map

Based on the card sorting, the first version of the information architecture was made. However through out the design process, user testing and the competitive analysis, the final version of the information architecture went thrugh multipl iterations.

Develop

Sketches and WireFrames

Low-Fidelity and Mid-Fidelity sketches were developed to map out the layouts or vision for each page of tripan website. The wireframes underwent several rounds of iteration before finalizing the content.

Search Home

Home

Search Results

Package Details Page

Design System

Low-Fidelity and Mid-Fidelity sketches were developed to map out the layouts or vision foreach page of tripan website. The wireframes underwent several rounds of iteration before finalizing the content

Moodboard

User Interface kit

Typeface

Icons

Mid-fidelity Iterations

Design System Usability Test

We tested Traveler task flow with 5 different potential users. We observed the following:

Task 1: Enable users to access the search bar on multiple pages during trip planning.

Task 2: Display a summary of the latest search criteria in the search bar on these pages to enhance user clarity and reduce confusion.

Situation 1: Travelers frequently needed to refine their search criteria but search functionality was limited to homepage, forcing users to repeatedly return to home.

Sitiuation 2: After conducting multiple searches, users began to lose track of the criteria they had previously used.

Action: We integrated the search bar in the header of all pages except for the checkout, ensuring instant access to search functionality. Additionally, we displayed the latest search criteria in the search bar, enhancing clarity and navigation for users.

Result: This adjustment significantly improved navigation clarity. Now, users have access to the search bar as wekk as their latest search criteria at the top of every page, allowing them to continuously refine their preferences.