BetterTravel (UX Research & Design)
BetterTravel is a mobile travel planning application using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning techniques to provide users with personalized travel ideas based on their preferences. In the app, multiple users are allowed to communicate and edit the travel plan at the same time.
My Impact
Doing 10+ interviews and detailed documented the interview notes
Brainstorming survey questions for the BetterTravel during the semester
Providing insights for each research results
Designing and refining the UI and UX of the BetterTravel application and information poster
Making the prototypes interactive
Project: Carnegie Mellon University Academic Project
Role: UI/UX Designer
About: UX research/ UX analysis/ UIUX design / Branding / Interaction design
Timeline: Fall 2022 (4 months)
Team Members: Qiwen Lei, Thomas Wei, Sharon Liu, Jeffery John, Sandra Zhou
Tools Used: Tableau, Excel, Miro, Figma
Overview
Problem
Our area of research specifically focuses on the moments where travelers may want to, or are required to, deviate from their original plans. There is a level of hesitancy that travelers experience in these moments that stem from both internal motivations as well as external contexts and conditions.
“How might we encourage travelers with a travel plan to embark on an experience they did not initially plan for?”
Insights
Research
Research Flow
Solution
Ideation
Design a comprehensive travel planning mobile platform, where users can chat, schedule, budget, and consider spontaneous additions to any preconceived plans.
At each stage of our user flow, user preferences are used to provide suggestions that prompt further ideation and inclusion of unplanned or novel experiences in their trips. Through this process, users can find consensus from all parties on interesting and valuable new travel experiences.
Design
Low-fi prototypes ⬇️
Playtest Feedback & Refine Direction
After doing playtest with ten target users, we got some feedback. After analyzing the feedback, I refined the low-fi prototypes in the following area:
Calendar Page
“+” icon -- “Add new trip/ add a new activity”
Click the blank space to add a new activity
Burger icon -- Preference
Travel Ideas Page
Add a customize the activity option on the first-screen
Add a cancel button
Profile Page
Refine the categories
Add ”log out” option
Activity Page
Add a customize function
Add a search function
Change “Need a new idea?” to another appearance
Chat Page
Add vote function
Add vote notification
Add share function
Add voice message function
Refined low-fi prototypes based on playtest results ⬇️
Design system ⬇️
Hi-fi prototypes ⬇️
Click the link or scan the QR code to try the interactive prototypes of BetterTravel.
Information Poster
Individual Retrospective
Takeaways
In this project, I got a chance to go step by step about becoming a good UX researcher. I learned many helpful research methods, including background research, think-aloud, directed storytelling, affinity diagramming, user journey map, empathy map, storyboards, speed dating, and usability testing. Before this project, I usually will pick about three to five research methods for my project and design based on the results I learn from them. I tended to spend more effort designing the UI and UX system than doing research. Lack of enough background information sometimes caused me to run into a situation where the playtest results showed I was on the wrong track. So, I had to make many adjustments to the design to fix the problems. After this project, I better understood the different information each research method can provide me. Therefore, in the future, I will be able to choose the methods that can better help me understand the project.
Plans to improve future interdisciplinary UX research group work
In our team, it is very clear that people have different specialties. We have teammates who feel more comfortable doing research and teammates who have more passion for design. Balancing people’s different preferences is one of the big topics our team paid a lot of attention to. In the future, if I get a chance to do another interdisciplinary UX research group work, I will try to step off more of my comfort zone to contribute more to UX data analysis if it is an academic project. And, I will trust the research results my UX researcher teammates give me and do my best to design a good UI and UX based on the research results.