Project
Gems
UX Designer | 2021
UX Designer | 2021
Skills
Competitive Analysis
Prototyping
User Interface Design
Team
Me (UI/UX Designer)
4 UX Designers
Tools
Figma
Miro
Balsamiq
In a UMSI design course, my team was tasked with creating an app focused on gratitude. Drawing inspiration from our affinity for travel apps and recognizing the hidden gems in our communities, we wanted to enable people to uncover exciting locations, serving as a reminder to express gratitude for the unique places around us.
Discovering hidden gems is challenging due to time constraints, technological illiteracy, and efforts required by platforms like Yelp or Airbnb. GEMS addresses this interaction design problem by simplifying the exploration of nearby attractions without extensive time, research, or financial resources.
An app with functionality for automatically creating travel plans so that people spend less time researching and more time exploring hidden gems.
First our team analyzed Yelp and Airbnb, two direct competitors of our platform. These are a few things that we noted as things to consider when making our platform.
Crowd-sourced reviews that build confidence in information
Algorithms that quickly and conveniently find locations to travel
Location services that highlight what is nearby
Next, our team examined Instagram and Netflix for features that could benefit our AI-based travel app, considering them as "analogous" competitors for inspiration and to align with user expectations.
Beautiful interfaces that are easy to pick up
Algorithms that automatically recommend content
Social components that build community
The team conducted interviews with 10 potential users in our target domain, with each member interviewing 2-3 people for 10-15 minutes. Detailed notes were qualitatively analyzed, yielding three main takeaways.
1. User's face information overload on other platforms
“The amount of websites out there is a bit overwhelming - I wish it was all in one place, especially because oftentimes I'm looking for something very specific.”
Interviewee, 55, Male
2. Finding things to do in one's community is often social
"Sometimes NextDoor and Facebook posts will pop up with cool things to do - people post about things going on and that generates interest."
Interviewee, 55, Female
3. Other platforms are full of ads and false information
“The problem with a lot of these other websites is that they are full of ads and I need to fill out a bunch of forms to get to the information that I want.”
Interviewee, 55, Male
We developed 2 primary personas and 2 secondary personas based on interview data, representing anticipated users: travelers and hosts.
Primary Persona
Secondary Persona
To better understand our target users, the team created storyboards to complement personas, aiming to provide realistic details about user activities, lifestyle, frustrations, and goals, enhancing app development.
To address our user's pain-points, our team contrived several key decisions that would guide the creation of our app.
1. Two types of accounts
In order to mitigate information overload, two account types should be established: "travelers" for exploring and creating travel plans, and "hosts" for organizing events in their communities.
2. AI-based travel itinerary generator
We will address the issue of information overload on travel websites by implementing a tool that will automatically recommend plans based on user preferences through a "travel personality quiz."
3. Collaborative travel planning
To address the challenge of coordinating plans with friends or family, our app will offer the ability for users to make collective decisions by creating groups and easily coordinating plans through synced travel quiz results.
A user flow diagram was made to show how we plan to have users interact with our app.
Each member of our group drew 3-5 interactions for a paper prototype.These were organized into a recording.
Next, we took our designs digital and built wireframes, improving upon our paper prototypes.
To prepare for our digital prototypes, a playful color scheme and font was selected.
In our Mid-Fi Prototype, we enhanced product visuals and implemented interactions for the main screens, facilitating a better understanding of process connections for our designers.
Our Hi-Fi Prototype! We revised several features of our design based on usability tests performed in class as well as created the "Host" screens of the app. View Hi-Fi Prototype.
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