Project Focus
MVP for a mobile app
My Role
End-to-end product designer
Timeframe
100 hrs
Tools
Figma, Illustrator
What's the problem?
Without a trusted guide offering a local perspective, travelers often don’t know how to travel safely in unknown areas which discourages them from fully exploring their destinations and experiencing what they have to offer.
Your personalized destination guide at your fingertips.
Save destinations | Discover cultural insights | Best safety practices | and more
Stay one step ahead with the latest destination developments.
Gain insights from travelers & locals
Connect with a community of travelers & locals with insights to share.
Geographical context on insights from travelers and locals
PROBLEM DISCOVERY
A bit of context
Although traveling can be a rewarding experience, it can also be daunting and challenging. Safety is rightly one of the major concerns for many travelers, especially when traveling to unfamiliar destinations. Adding this to the inevitable challenges of planning a trip can be a recipe for a regrettable travel experience.
While travel safety apps exist, they often lack localized information and personalization, limiting their effectiveness. Consequently, unaddressed safety concerns may deter potential travelers from visiting certain destinations, resulting in lost opportunities for new experiences and a decline in visitors to local businesses.
What I needed to know
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Identify the specific safety & well-being concerns solo travelers have in various travel scenarios
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Determine the safety measures people take to mitigate safety risks and increase their well-being while traveling alone
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Pinpoint the challenges travelers face when trying to mitigate safety risks while traveling alone
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Uncover the past experiences solo travelers have had related to safety and well-being concerns while traveling
What did I learn?
Knowledge, whether researched or learned from a trusted individual provides a valuable stepping stone for staying safe, but this is not always easily accessible.
Lack of personalized help
Without a trusted knowledgeable person helping them out, travelers often don’t know what areas to avoid for safety concerns or how to handle certain situations in their destinations.
Gaps in travel knowledge
Knowledge about a destination greatly increases a traveler's ability to travel with cautious confidence, but easily researching relevant information on various topics can be a challenge.
"It’s difficult to know what areas to avoid or how to safely handle certain situations when I travel without local insights to help me out."
Who’s the competition?
Surprisingly, there’s not a lot of comprehensive mobile app solutions in this problem space to address all the problems I found. This presented an opportunity to offer solutions for an untapped market space.
​How might we leverage local insights with real-time information to prepare travelers to explore unknown places safely?
IDEATE & PROTOTYPE
4 key features to start
Personalized research guide
Cultural insights & best safety practices on various topics catered to user selected destinations.
Safety alerts feed
Real-time safety alerts and hazard updates on user selected destinations and/or current location.
Community insights
Share travel experiences with a community of travelers & offer advice from a locals perspective.
Interactive insight map
Interactive map to provide a geographical context for travel & safety insights from the community.
How can users find info on local taxis & ridesharing?
Starting rough around the edges
Low-fidelity wireframes were first created through sketches for quick idea exploration. Defining the user’s flow was my main consideration and the UI language was starting to take shape.
Going digital
​Mid-fidelity wireframes were developed in tandem with the developing user flows.
TEST & ITERATE
What were the positives?
It was an overall successful test and provided evidence that showed this could be a strong solution to aiding travelers in discovering unknown places safer & more confidently.
The community feature was a delightful surprise to users and was highly welcomed as a way to get insights from both locals and other travelers.
What needed improvement?
Not everything aligned with users' needs and desires. Based on feedback from usability testing, I implemented key changes before progressing to the high-fidelity design phase.
Confusion with destinations
I needed to address the confusion users had with one of the user-selected destinations acting as a “primary destination”. Users weren’t sure why one of their selected destinations was prioritized over another.
Before usability test
After usability test
Before usability test
After usability test
Introducing the community
Users expressed a desire to be introduced to the community earlier in their experience with the app, as they considered it the most important feature but were aware of its existence later than they would’ve liked.
Finding insights on the go
​Users found it challenging to locate specific information on the taxis and ridesharing page, particularly when they were on the move.
Before usability test
After usability test
REFLECTION
Impact
Users who gave me the opportunity to test the prototype expressed a positive response and a potential for Triphaven to play a major role in helping them stay safe while traveling. This would encourage travel to unexplored places and help businesses that rely on tourism.
Personal takeaways
This project taught me the importance of using diverse approaches to tackle problems when the initial method falls short. This project marked the first time I felt a clear sense of direction throughout the entire design process.
The key difference was in how I approached my initial research findings to define the problem. By thoroughly reviewing the raw data multiple times before interpreting it, something I struggled to do in the past, I was able to uncover the core of travelers' safety concerns that they hadn't explicitly mentioned during interviews. This allowed me to pinpoint a concrete, actionable problem that became the project's foundation and gave me confidence in project's direction.
What’s next?
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Optimize how travelers like to find their desired information. A/B testing could be a way to find out what works best.
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Further, develop the map feature to see how a user could geotag a post and allow users to visually see what areas have a bad reputation for safety concerns.
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Explore how users can add and remove destinations after initial onboarding.
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