This story began in autumn of 2011 year. My client, travel agency from Manchester, UK, ordered a redesign of their web resource. Also, I was asked to find any ideas in concept form to increase their competitiveness.

 

General redesign process was quite ordinary (you can see the result below), so I began to concentrate my creative efforts on finding out new ideas, that could enhance the booking search system (as a core of the most of booking user scenarios).

 

After some interviews with frequent travellers, that prefer comfort (one of target audiences) I've found out the interesting fact, that the most of them had a little confidence in "official" descriptions of hotels (I knew about it but underestimated the significance of the factor).

Due to the research, recommendations by strangers were trusted more, but most of all people prefer to consult with friends and family about the place to go and hotel to stay.

 

Keeping this in mind I've proposed to develop the social plugin that could be the platform to discuss the travel choices with friends and rate them, creating the personal lists of favourites places where people would like to travel to.

 

So, the main idea was "Use the power of travel knowledge of your friends".

 

After the design of user scenarios and userflows I designed the Lo-Fi concept prototypes and present them to stakeholders. 

 

 

I'll add the brief materials soon.