48 hours challenge
Rapid research and UX design for the travel service
that helps people plan group trips
Our team participated in a startup competition focused on a travel industry where within 48 hours we needed to come up with a validated product idea and proof-of-concept for the solution.
My main focus areas were the user research and design. Let's dive into it!
Product idea 💡
We had an idea for a service that will help people easily organise group trips. Based on our experience it's a hustle to plan a trip and come to a mutual agreement with other travellers.
First step for us was to understand if other people have these challenges and what they consider the biggest issues in the process.
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Reach out to potential customers
to understand their problems and needs
In order to validate it quickly we decided to make a survey and send it through our personal network, post it on social media channels and in online communities.
There are many techniques that can be used. Since our idea supposed to be a general public consumer product we decided to do surveys.
Below is the survey that we've prepared. Within 24 hours we collected almost 100 responses.
Understand the demographics
First, for us it was important to understand the demographics of our audience.
Also, for us it was important to know if a person is usually an organiser of a trip or not, since our assumption was that depending on it people have different behaviour when planning a trip (organisers are more active while non-organisers are more passive).
And finally, the key questions:
Organisers have the following top 3 challenges:
1️⃣ Chasing answers from friends;
2️⃣ Communicate travel plans and collect opinions from fellow travelers;
3️⃣ Planning the trip is too time consuming.
Those who take part in a trip have the following top 3 challenges:
1️⃣ Not having a clear understanding of different travel plans;
2️⃣ Difficulties communicating trip suggestions or preferences to travel planner;
3️⃣ Not having time to be involved in the planning process.
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Based on the survey results we prioritised the following aspects for the service:
➡️ Ease of use;
➡️ Clear overview of the travel plan to all travellers;
➡️ Collaborative environment;
➡️ Ability to communicate personal suggestions and preferences to fellow travelers.
Visualise the user journey
Now it's time to define key product features for the further validation.
Having time constraint in 48 hours encourages to move fast and focus on the most important activities that would help to get valuable insights instead of spending time perfecting things.
Because of this we decided to visualise the user journey using design wireframes: it is sufficient enough to highlight main product features and scenarios without going into too much details.
Friendly Welcoming
Starting point of the application plays an important role. Our intention was to demonstrate to the user key product features right away and make it easy to get started:
➡️ Offer suggestions for trips based on the user's location;
➡️ Let the user start planning a trip quickly by entering the desired location;
➡️ Invite friends to plan a trip together.
Trip Planning
This is the core of the product where the trip planning and collaboration happens.
See the next wireframes for more details.
Define a route
The organiser proposes the route for a trip. It'll be visible to everyone who's already invited.
Invite fellow travelers
New members can be invited at any time to review suggested routes and share their opinion.
Suggest alternative routes
If a group member has other suggestions she can propose them to the group.
Agree on routes
All group members can review and vote for the preferred routes to make a quick decision on the trip plan.
Itinerary details
Together travellers agree on travel dates and transportation options for the trip 🙌
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Next validation steps
The next step was to prepare an interactive prototype based on the wireframes to be used for user testing in order to validate the product offering and usability of the service.
The prototyping process can be covered in a separate project if there is an interest!
Thanks for making it all the way
till the end!
