TripFlip
Tools
Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Miro, Figma, Airtable
Role
Sole UX/UI Designer
Context
TripFlip is a multi-destination travel app streamlining the planning process on a unified platform. It addresses challenges in coordinating multi-destination journeys, offering a one-stop solution for travel and stay options. With a vision of fostering convenience and flexibility, TripFlip aims to provide a seamless user experience, catering to diverse traveler preferences.
The Challenge
Planning multi-destination trips overwhelms travelers with excessive information from various platforms, making it hard to finalize decisions. The abundance of options and fragmented booking experiences lead to decision fatigue and frustration. TripFlip addresses this by offering an integrated, streamlined platform that consolidates bookings, simplifying the process and reducing the need to navigate between multiple sites, while still providing the necessary information to make informed choices.
Understanding the Problem
Background
The internet has transformed how travelers plan their trips, providing access to a plethora of information and booking platforms. According to Expedia Group, travelers review an average of 141 pages of travel content in the 45 days before booking, peaking at 25 page views on the purchase day. While this reflects a desire for comprehensive information, it also highlights a potential issue: too many choices can lead to decision paralysis.
The Problem
Despite the vast amount of content available, excessive information can negatively impact booking intentions. Research indicates that an overload of data may overwhelm travelers, making it challenging for them to finalize decisions. Specifically, high-quality service and system functionality promote bookings, but a decline in information quality—stemming from an excess of choices—can deter users from completing reservations. This underscores the need for a more streamlined approach to travel planning that balances information richness with clarity.
The Solution
1. Integrated All-in-One Booking Platform: Develop a streamlined booking platform that consolidates travel options into a single interface, allowing users to efficiently compare and book accommodations, transportation, and activities without the need to navigate multiple sites.
2. Focused Information Delivery: Provide curated, essential information tailored to user preferences, reducing overwhelm from excessive choices while still ensuring access to valuable resources and reviews.
Empathize
Competitive Analysis: Key Takeaways
I conducted a competitive analysis of popular multi-destination travel planning platforms, including Kayak Trip Planner, TripIt, Roadtrippers, and Sygic Travel. This analysis aimed to assess their strengths and weaknesses in helping users plan complex travel itineraries and identify gaps in the current market.
Streamlined Integration: Users often face the inconvenience of switching between travel apps and other platforms, affecting the overall user experience. Opportunity to design a travel app that minimizes the need for users to switch between different platforms, offering a more seamless and consolidated experience.
Collaboration Enhancement: Weaknesses in collaboration features across different apps may hinder efficient group trip planning and coordination. Opportunity to provide users with seamless group trip planning and coordination functionalities.
Global Accessibility and Information: Weaknesses in providing comprehensive information on international destinations and flights may limit the appeal of certain travel apps for global travelers with diverse destination preferences. Opportunity to allow users to plan internationally and give comprehensive information on international destinations and flights, ensuring a more inclusive and expansive user base.
Diverse Travel Experiences: Cater to a broader audience by developing a versatile app that goes beyond niche specializations, appealing to users with varied travel preferences.
User Interviews: Key Takeaways
I conducted one-on-one, moderated interviews with five participants to gain insights into their travel planning experiences. These interviews revealed key challenges, which are summarized in the following takeaways.
Overwhelmed by options: Users felt stressed by the sheer number of available booking platforms and deals, making it difficult to confidently make a choice.
Difficulty comparing platforms: Many users found it challenging to navigate between different websites, feeling that they were missing out on better deals elsewhere.
Time-consuming process: Travelers expressed frustration with the time it took to browse multiple pages and options before feeling ready to book.
Lack of trust: Users mentioned uncertainty around the reliability of certain platforms or offers, which often led to hesitation or second-guessing.
Desire for an all-in-one solution: Most interviewees expressed a preference for a single, integrated platform where they could easily compare options and book everything in one place.
How might we simplify and streamline the travel booking process to reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed by too many choices, while minimizing the time spent browsing and booking?
Define Opportunities
User Persona
I created a user persona, Sarah—a mother of two who loves vacations but struggles with the fragmented and overwhelming process of trip planning—based on insights gathered from user research. This persona was developed to gain a better understanding of my users' pain points and was used throughout the design process to keep the solution focused on their needs and provide a user-centered approach.
Ideate Solutions
In addressing the challenges faced by travelers in planning and booking their trips, I transformed identified problems into actionable solutions.
Problem: Travelers often feel overwhelmed by too many choices and a disjointed booking process.
Solution: An integrated travel booking platform is proposed that simplifies the process, consolidating options to reduce decision fatigue. This solution stands out as a cohesive experience that addresses the pain points of potential users.
User Journey
The user journey outlines the streamlined trip planning process, emphasizing flexibility for users to customize their booking experience according to their preferences.
User Flow
Building on the user journey, this user flow details the complete trip planning process. It enables users to seamlessly organize transportation, accommodations (beyond just hotels), and experiences at each destination.
Prototype
Low Fidelity Wireframes
I sketched initial wireframe concepts for the multi-destination travel booking platform, focusing on how users navigate through the booking steps. This approach helped me visualize the user journey and interactions throughout the process.
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
I transformed my low-fidelity sketches into mid-fidelity wireframes, concentrating on the booking experience with a focus on trip planning, collaboration, transportation, and stays. I also conducted usability tests on these wireframes to inform further iterations of my design.
Usability Testing
I conducted usability testing with five participants, including frequent travelers and occasional vacation planners, who engaged in tasks involving trip planning. These tasks included adding dates and destinations, navigating transportation options, and utilizing filtering features to customize their travel preferences. Participants interacted with key screens, such as the trip planner, transportation options, and the filtering menu, to evaluate the app’s ease of use and functionality.
Tasks
Organize trip details and add multiple destinations.
Input travel dates effectively.
Navigate filtering options for transportation choices.
Findings
The overall feedback indicated areas needing improvement. Users struggled with the date selection and destination addition processes, finding them unintuitive. The filtering system for transportation was also unclear; many users did not realize they could filter by transportation style, leading to confusion and unnecessary touchpoints. Additionally, users preferred to click directly on the transportation and stays cards rather than using the “view more” option, suggesting that this feature might not add value as intended.
High Fidelity Prototype
Plan Your Trip
Taking in feedback from the mid fidelity design usability tests, I removed the hamburger slider icon, as users were not sure of its use. I changed the icon to allow more uses than just reorganizing, in which users can view multiple options via the icon. Furthermore, the usability test also demonstrated an unintuitive destination and date selection. I iterated the design to make it clear to users how you may add destinations and dates, specifically utilizing the calendar pop up to allow users to easily select dates.
Transportation
Moving forward from the mid fidelity wireframe, I iterated the transportation page with the goal of increasing visibility of the different transportation options and decreasing touch points. This iteration allows users to swipe through the different options. In the previous usability test, users did not specifically click “view more” but rather simply clicked the card, leading me to remove the unnecessary button.
Where to Stay
To promote versatility, I opted for a map and list option for places to stay in each destination. Similarly to the transportation pages, I removed the “view more” button, as users simply clicked the cards themselves during the usability tests.
Interactive Prototype
This interactive prototype demonstrates the flow from selecting trip dates to browsing transportation and stay options, focusing on the overall journey and interactions within the platform.
Takeaways
Reflections
Creating an all-in-one platform like TripFlip was more complex than I initially anticipated, with so many elements—accommodations, transportation, and overall trip logistics—needing to be seamlessly integrated. The challenge was balancing a streamlined experience without overwhelming users with too many options. Research was key throughout, revealing user behavior and decision-making patterns, and it reinforced the importance of adapting designs based on real feedback. Overall, it was an interesting and rewarding process that deepened my understanding of multi-step planning solutions.
Future Considerations
Activity Booking Integration: To further streamline the experience, I would explore adding activity booking features, allowing users to browse and schedule activities, tours, or experiences at their chosen destinations, all from within the app.
Deal Comparison Feature: Another useful addition would be a deal comparison tool that automatically aggregates the best travel, accommodation, and package deals from various sources, helping users easily find the most cost-effective options without switching between platforms.