Concept
Gully allows users to plan for their next trip in one location. Minimizing apps, search engines, and the number of passwords to remember, Gully makes planning easier.
Everyone knows a trip can go from great to terrible in the blink of an eye - let Gully make sure things go according to plan.
User Research
In a random sample of candidates, users were asked about their travel habits. This included the frequency at which they travel, purpose of travel, how they book their travel, applications used to house travel reservations, travel pain-points, etc.
After compiling and analyzing user data, the results were in…
“Travelers need a way to easily organize travel reservations.
A trip is classified as ruined, if it does not go according to plan.
Easing in the planning process can decrease planning strains, encourage more trips, and decrease stress when there are changes to the itinerary.”
What’s on the Market?
There are quite a few Travel Planning applications on the market today, however, based on user research, these applications are either hardly used or unheard of. When it comes to marketing, these apps missed the bar.
Features
The feature dream list can be quite lengthy, especially at the onset of a project. It’s important to sift through the list with stakeholders to address which features will make the first release. Scope creep is bad for budgets, resources, and schedule. Often times it can be helpful to build a two-by-two matrix to determine which features are both expected and will have the highest impact for users. This can be a good place to start with prioritization. Notifications and Auto-Importing were at the top of the list for Gully.
User Flows, Storyboarding, Sketching - Oh my!
Key to a successful designer - lots of sketching. Get all your thoughts down on paper. Draw a storyboard detailing how a user might interact with the application. Generate a user flow diagram detailing specific application functionality - how to keep users on their happy path in order to accomplish their tasks successfully. Determine the information architecture of your product determining how a user will navigate to the desired goal. Sketch out screens to bring designs to life. And don’t reinvent the wheel - use design patterns and standardization to create product that is intuitive and easy to build.
Grab users to test out different phases of the design work. Even when thinking about how to best organize features within the application, try card sorting with users - never assume you know best! Designers spend so much time in this phase, and for a good reason - it’s costly to build something only to realize people won’t use it.
Wireframes - Designed in Sketch
Wireframes
Once initial design work has been fleshed out - it’s time to bring them to life and build out a wireframe. When it comes to a Lo-Fi wireframe versus a Hi-Fi wireframe, I believe this is a matter of preference. I personally like a combination of the two: draw out a few Lo-Fi frames to some ideas down on paper, then expand on them by building a Hi - Fi wireframe.
Prototypes
Creating a working prototype gives a more realistic representation of how the application will flow without having to actually build it. It is useful for usability testing so as to examine where users succeed and struggle navigating through the application. It’s a sneak peak into seeing how a new user might act if your product was pushed into production right that second.
Usability Testing
I find this to be the most useful part of the design process. Acting as if a fly on the wall watching how users interact with your prototype. It provides a lot of unbiased feedback before actually building the product. Participants were given a few scenarios in Gully’s initial usability test:
Scenario 1: You are traveling to Denver July 24-28th 2019. Create a New Itinerary.
Scenario 2: Add your flight information to the itinerary.
Scenario 3: View your Departure Boarding Pass.
Scenario 4: Sync your Uber Account.
Results:The usability test proved to be successful in that each of the users were able to complete all of the scenarios. Many of the findings were already implemented into the designs seen above which included:
Make returning to the home page more intuitive, which meant removing the “hamburger” icon.
Reducing the number of screens in creating a new itinerary.
Relocate “Browsing” options to another location additionally, bump this to a V2 feature.
The extent of the first prototype was specifically aimed at creating an itinerary. The next round of iterations will also aim at the addition of key features that will set the application apart from the competition. This will include more focus on notifications and offline capabilities.
What’s Next?
Iteration! Iteration! Iteration! There will always be room for improvements. Implement changes and perform additional usability tests until the design is ready to present to stakeholders. Gully’s stakeholders include product, engineering, and business execs. Next steps include meeting with:
Engineering - Sync to discuss feasibility, timelines, etc. with the finalized prototype for V1 of this application.
Business Execs - Discuss the big takeaways from competitor analysis and usability testings. Best to describe how Gully can be the leader of the pack. For example, current applications on the market were unbeknownst to most users, so spending extra money on marketing and possible paid partnerships could make Gully a leader in this field.