Problem Background  

The problem we are addressing for our users are booking flights, lodging information, packing clothes and finding recommendations for the area you want to be in a central area. While conducting our user research we identified making traveling a smoother experience, we can make it less of a burden. 

Our customers have a problem searching for the cheapest airfare. Many major airlines offer basic economy fares, which are below economy class. These fares in the end make you likely pay extra such as choosing your seat and bringing on a carry-on.       

The issues that come up with our users when searching lodging information can be searching for wrong dates. choosing the wrong number of rooms, some sites are not as clear, they can easily book multiple rooms.The wrong location can be easily chosen in the incorrect city or even country.  

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Research Insights & User Pain Points

The Travel Access team crafted a user survey which 31 people completed. The purpose of this survey is to learn about our users' experiences traveling. A trend in reviewing the response data of the survey is we saw the need for a checklist when they are traveling.

Reviewing our survey, our user's main purpose for traveling is for personal use. 

Users quotes:

• Yvonne - "Creating a complete checklist"
• Henry - "Finding the dates with the cheapest flights & creating a complete checklist"
• Sarah- "I got a cheap flight so the seats were super tiny and uncomfortable"

Solution Explanation

Based on our target user pain points, such as when traveling coming up across expensive hidden fees after booking a ticket. Also knowing a good deal with hotels, amenities, activities, and food options in the areas are a pain point. When planning the issue of having a checklist to check off items needed for their upcoming trip is a pain point which has come up in our research.      

We decided it was best to focus on the checklist feature. It will help users better prepare for an upcoming trip and make sure they have everything they need. 

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Lofi & Hifi Mockups

Lofi

HiFi

Iterative Design Learnings

Issue #1: Users were confused if they were logged into their account. 

Recommendation:

• Removed profile icon and put “Sign In” instead. After a user is logged in, they will be able to see their profile picture icon as well as a welcome sign to indicate they are in their account. 

Issue #2: Users are confused about the search and filter. 

Recommendation: 

• Instead of a search bar, we will use a drop down menu to allow users to be able to differentiate between their saved/created templates and the site’s templates. 

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Issue #3: Users are confused about whether the checklist templates are theirs or not. 

Recommendation:

• For their saved checklists, they will have a heart on it to represent it as a saved/favourites template. 

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Implementation Details 

Technical implementation

The app is hosted:

• Backend- Heroku
• Frontend- Vercel

Our tech stack:

• Ruby on rails and react
• Amadeus API
• Tailwind css for styling
• React.js
  
  

Technical challenges

The hardest part of development:

• Figuring out how to structure the database. 
• Challenges to the front-end

Does your app have any scaling issues:

• No users yet

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How to measure success

North star metric:

• Recurring usage of the checklist

Leading indicators:

• # of user sign-ups
• Daily app launches
• Daily active users

Lagging Indicator:

• user retention 
• Most search items
• Referral

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Future Steps

The travel access team will love to build out the following features. In our backlog we have the ability for users to research flights, look up the weather for the destination they are going to and a currency converter within the app.  Also to come in the future are Geo-Tracking Services, In-App Language Translator and Location-Based Emergency Services and Uber-Like App Service Integration.