Duration
5 Weeks
Role
Research
Product Design
Tools
Sketch
InVision
Explor
An AR travel app that empowers travelers during the exploration of a new city.
Design Challenge
Travelers lack resources to explore a new city because current solutions favor a pre-planned experience. This detracts from spontaneous experiences and travel discoveries.
Design Opportunity
Design a travel app that encourages spontaneous exploration and helps travelers dictate their own travel experience.
The Solution
My design solution is an AR platform that processes data in user’s viewfinder to identify nearby landmarks and potential areas of exploration. Travelers can use this information to evaluate their options and choose experiences that most appeal to them.
Features
Location Identification
Travelers can hold their live camera up to interesting locations or areas that they find. The app will identify the place and provide additional information.
Mapping Journal
When using the tool, travelers will generate a catalog of places they have bookmarked so they can reflect on their journey and remember their experience.
Process
This flow chart illustrates my design process.
Target Users
Travelers who enjoy discovering new places and immersing themselves in new experiences. They value exploration and discovery within the overall travel experience.
Research
I first noticed some points of friction in the traveling experience during my study abroad in Seoul. To gather deeper insights about the topic, I interviewed people who enjoy traveling to new places.
My questions sought to gather information about existing resources, travel planning logistics, and pain points in the travel experience.
Snippets of two interviews I conducted
Storytelling
In my interviews, some of the questions included a storytelling exercise. For their stories, I asked them to imagine that they are traveling to a new city for the first time and answer in a first-person narrative format.
Research Analysis
To study trends and identify key pain points, I created an affinity diagram to group similar ideas.
Pain Points
Based on my interviews, common problems that interviewees experienced when exploring a new place were:
It can be tough to fill the time in between major destinations.
Verifying the quality and fit of places can be tedious.
Travelers can feel a tradeoff between quality and convenience.
Competitive Analysis
After identifying the problem, I looked at popular existing apps to see if they filled the need.
Existing travel resources that prescribe travel suggestions limit opportunities to explore a new city. Selecting an activity through existing services detracts from the overall travel experience.
Rethinking the Tourism Experience
To remove some of the hurdles of discovering new places, I thought about restructuring the user’s flow of actions.
Ideation
After synthesizing my insights, I brainstormed potential design solutions and went through rounds of downselection to decide on a single design concept.
Other ideas included:
Matching tourists with a local
An integrated QR system
Travel voice assistant
Why AR?
During research, it was evident that our eyes are our most powerful tool while traveling. Participants were naturally drawn to places that caught their eye. An AR solution helps enhance this experience by supplementing the user with additional information.
Low-fidelity Wireframes
Before moving to Sketch, I drew wireframes to guide my designs and user interactions.
Designing the Viewfinder
One of the problems that travelers encountered was locating and identifying options that are around them. To address this pain point, the viewfinder marks locations with icons. The icons vary in size based on the proximity of the location.
Users can filter their search results and tap on an icon to receive more information. Locations are represented by icons because they help reduce information clutter and allow travelers to quickly scan the type of options available to them.
Designing Locations
If a traveler is intrigued by a location and they want to learn more, they can tap the location window to trigger a bottom drawer. Drawers can be pulled up to show more information, or dismissed if the user is no longer interested.
For designing the location overview, I featured information that my interviewees used to pick locations. Information is divided into general, reviews, and photos to help users decide if the place matches their interest.
While the drawer is active, a floating action button can be used to bookmark a location.
Designing the Bookmark Journal
During interviews, two interviewees cited points of reflection as a valuable aspect of traveling that made the overall experience fulfilling. The bookmarks page helps record places that they have visited and provides easy access to the informational pages of the locations they visited.
User Task Flows
Prototype Demo
Below is a short video showing the user flow and interactions.
User Testing
Currently working on user testing for refinement of user interactions and experience.
Dark Mode
Also working on a dark mode for night time traveling!
Takeaways
Design through an AR lens: AR has benefits and limitations, but it can be an incredibly powerful tool with the right application. This was a great project to learn how product design principles can interact with the environment around us.
Design opportunities are everywhere: This project reinforced the idea that there are countless opportunities to identify problems and develop solutions. Even though there are existing solutions in the same project area, we can rethink the approach to these problems.
Stay tuned for more updates.
Thanks for reading!