Sumando destinos
ROLE
UX Designer, UX Researcher, Front End Developer
DESCRIPTION
Design a unique and pleasing travel blog with better usability compared to the competition, while handling the business neeeds of building an audience
TOOLS
MockFlow, Nelio A/B Testing, Optimal Workshop, Figma
YEAR
2021
PRODUCT
Travel Blog
PLATFORM
Website
UX Case Study
MY APPORACH AND PROCESS
My process employed a design thinking mindset, in which I focused first on learning about the problem space, through the discovery stages of understanding and empathy, then on synthesizing what I had learned to define and frame the problem, and finally on creating solutions through stages of ideation, prototyping and testing.
Problem
Usually people struggle while planning a trip by exploring too many travel blogs. No proper information is provided everywhere and that's the reason why they get frustrated while they are on trips because they think they are missing on anything.
1. Empathize
With a good understanding of travel trends and information tracking, I then moved into primary research, where I could learn directly from travelers through
user interviews. Prior to setting these up, I developed a research plan with the following goals:
1. Identify the key pieces of travel information that users want and need
2. Discover the pain points in a customer journey when planning their trip
3. Determine what tools travellers use currently to get and organise travel information
I started by developing a screener survey, which had almost 15 respondents, and which provided some useful quantitative information on how people planning.
2. Define
Personas
3. Design
Sketching wireframes was effortless once I had a clear vision of the goals and users needs. After my research, I began starting to think of the best approach for designing my website Sumando Destinos by working through low-fidelity sketching which is just drawing one’s ideas out on pen and paper to get as many thoughts out in the shortest amount of time. This allowed me to work through a large number of ideas, layouts, and overall possibilities at a low cost, low stakes level.
After that, I created a mid-fidelity prototype so I could quickly test the solutions I designed with real users. I created enough screens to allow testers to complete some tasks.
4. Testing
5. Iteration
Focusing on the main frustration when users planning a trip which is searching information, I presented my design to 7 people and asked them to move through the task "gathering information to organise your trip". My goal was to find out what wasn't working in my structure of the information and design and how I could address it.
Based on the results of the mid-fidelity testing, a few users pointed out that the menu was slightly confusing and it would be useful for them to add new category "Rutas" to the main navigation menu. This change allows them to get the information they are interested in more quickly and easily, thereby reducing frustration and improving their experience.
On the other hand, it was interesting to explore and test how navigation can be optimized with other elements such as the CTA. So through the heat map I could see how the CTA was not fulfilling its purpose of generating conversions, specially in the desktop version. So, the CTA should be placed in a more visible place to encourage the user, should lead to a more natural interaction.
Modifications after the usability test for the iteration included:
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Add a new category "Rutas"
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Placing a more visible CTA below the header