Discovering a New Travel Experience

Designing a website for a fictional time travel service helps users pinpoint their next adventure.

Zeit, a new venture from Richard Branson, has been able to make time travel tourism available to all. They needed to instill interest and excitement in this one of a kind fictional company with a new brand and responsive website in which they can sell travel packages to different times in history.

User research showed people enjoy doing research and the process of trip planning. They get inspiration to travel from a variety of places. They seek out meaningful, and unique experiences and want to understand and immerse themselves —engaging with the people, culture, nature, and arts of the places they visit. They want the details handled. Resort travel is fine, but this did not seem to elicit the excitement of going on an excursion. 

The solution included a clear navigation that provided filters based on their area of interest. This provided users the experience of discovering a new and exciting trip and enjoyment in researching the next adventure they were looking for.

Scope of Work

Research

Research began with a competitive review to identify trends and online best practices in the travel booking landscape to identify opportunities for Zeit. Interviews were conducted with participants who plan and book trips online. This information helped us understand their trip planning process, their expectations in online trip booking, their frustrations and unmet needs. 

Some universal criteria emerged. Their inspiration comes from a multitude of sources; word of mouth, shows, books, and history. They want to use their vacation days wisely, so making the most of their time is very important as is budget. They want a clear and easy way to communicate with the booking company. They want to have enriching, cultural experiences that are authentic are local to the area they are visiting. Walkability is highly desirable. Being near some attractions takes the stress out of driving in an unfamiliar area. They want to have comfortable, clean, safe accommodations in a safe area.

Strategy

From the research data gathered, an empathy map was built and a persona was developed to capture the main user group. Laura the Explorer is a professional who is always thinking about where she’d like to travel next. She loves the research part of planning but trying to put the logistics together is a little daunting. She expects travel sites to be clear in their communication, useful in her research, aesthetically pleasing. She uses filters to help her pinpoint her next, unique destination.

Digging further into what motivates Laura, a storyboard was developed where Laura’s interest in finding unique trip experiences where logistics handled are addressed. This exercise helped prioritize functionality for the site.

Then, the storyboard was turned into a user flowchart, mapping out the easiest path for Laura to find a trip to make a purchase on the website.

To understand how to organize the website content a card sorting workshop was conducted. Participants were asked to categorize 20 items. The test proved inconclusive, as every person sorted and named the categories differently. Broad categories like geographic location and time period were common to everyone, the rest fell into trip type or specific interest which became a third category for Adventures.

Interaction Design

As the research phase revealed that giving users a clear way to filter their search and get engaged in researching Zeit’s interesting offerings is the key to customer satisfaction and booking, Design emphasis was placed on:

• Filter features that satisfies user needs to explore and make purchase decisions.

• Familiar navigation structure that allow users to intuitively browse, compare items to each other and view the details of a specific item.

• Traditional and clean aesthetic to create an experience of history. Photography will feature close-ups of hands, historic items, activities and events. No faces will be shown to protect the people in the times visited as it could alter history.  

Designs were first sketched out on paper then built into low-fidelity wireframes via Sketch. The wireframes were then used to create a prototype with InVision for usability testing. The task was for them to schedule a Lewis and Clark Expedition and click on the Book Trip button. 

Interface Design

Based on research, the interface of the site needed to feel compelling and intriguing to inspire the target travel planner to explore and discover. This was conceptualized where users can come upon a particular type of adventure in the time period they desire to immerse themselves in.

The stone tower “cairn” logo represents a marker in time and history. A branding style tile was created for text, photography and visual textures, and from that a UI kit was designed. The overall effect is clean and classic.

Finally, a high-fidelity prototype was built with InVision and tested with users. Participants were asked to find an Italian Renaissance Trip and click on the Book Trip button. All the users were able to complete the task, but they all went to the search box (which we were not testing). Once on the search results page, the order of the filters were confusing. On the trip detail page they could not find the Book Trip button immediately.

An affinity map was created and priority revisions were determined and incorporated into the final deliverable.

Next Steps

Test the priority revisions and make any easy, necessary changes and handoff to developers.

Reflection

I really enjoyed working on Zeit. As a frequent travel planner, it was interesting to find out how people get their inspiration and approach trip planning. Through this project I have a better appreciation of how small changes can have a big impact on overall successful results. Getting to create an experience that would inspire users with their travel goals was challenging but very rewarding.

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