top of page
291.jpg

UX/UI

LOCALLY ABROAD

OVERVIEW

PROBLEM

Every year more and more college students are choosing to go abroad but weekend trips still prove to be the toughest part to plan and organize. Coordinating with those with different mindsets, budgets and goals proves the most difficult of all.

SOLUTION

Locally Abroad: the app that allows students studying abroad  to create a trip with friends and gives a space to chat, build an itinerary and budget your trips. You can even share your experience and look to see what other students did on their trips to ensure you don’t fall into any tourist trap!

UX/UI Designer

Discovery

User Research 

Designer

Illustration 

Prototyping 

Testing

MY ROLE

image29.png
image36.png
image27.png
image8.png

TOOLS

USED

DESIGN PROCESS

USER-CENTERED DESIGN

  1. Secondary Research

  2. Primary Research

         -Screener Survey

         -Interviews

SYNTHESIZING

  1. Affinity/ Empathy Mapping

  2. Personas 

  3. HMW

  1. User Stories

  2. Site Map

  3. Userflows

  4. Sketching 

  5. Guerrilla Testing

  1. Wireframes

  2. UI Design

  3. Hi-Fi Designs

  1. Usability Testing

  2. Ideation

DISCOVERY

DISCOVERY

This was the time to delve into my problem hypothesis and see if a solution could be generated and translated into an application. I started with secondary research, then went into primary research through surveys, interviews and competitive analysis to extrapolate the solution.

RESEARCH

Secondary Research: First, I researched the data behind study abroad programs and a myriad of first-hand blogs of people who went abroad to find the ideal demographic for this user group, what solutions they were already using and to see if this was a strong consumer group to target.

Biggest Insights: 

  • Study Abroad participation has been increasing 2% each year (not including COVID years)

  • Apps they already use: Google Docs, Trip Advisor, Google Flights

  • Most common demographic: 20 years old, Summer Semester, Travels to Europe, Female

Primary Research: Now was the time to conduct interviews, but first I sent out a screener survey to 20 participants to find the ideal candidates to ask questions and to further explore the problem. Then, I chose and interviewed five participants who could best answer the questions I had. The ideal candidate is someone who: studied abroad, went on a lot of weekend trips, struggled to plan them and was in the 20-25 age range. 

Exploratory/ Screener Survey: Quantitative Results

  • 60% went on 7-10 weekend trips

  • 80% said that budgeting was the biggest challenge

  • 73% said that organizing weekend trips was the biggest challenge

  • On a scale of 1-10 of how hard it was to plan weekend trips the average answer was: 7.2

Interview Insights- Qualitative 

  • Two distinct groups

    • The Planner: Made Google spreadsheets, Google Docs and had a loose itinerary every place they went 

      • “We made massive spreadsheets on google sheets before the trip with all the info”

      • “After each trip I would go back through all the receipts and put in what everyone owed in Google Sheets”

      • Wish there was a place to chat with people because chats would get lost

      • Wish there was an easier way to budget and see what people owed people 

      • Wish there was a way to build an itinerary 

image31.png
image33.png
    • The Compliant: Others in the group planned for them, they were just required to make sure they were on top of everything and would try and help where they could.
      • “Honestly, I left the booking up to the roommates and they would tell me what to do” (T)
      • Wish they could put in more insight but didn’t care enough to
      • Would often forget to book or pay people 
      • Wish there was a way to see what you did in the past or look at what other people did 
      • To suggest things for an itinerary or see what the plan was so they could put in input
image1.png
image19.png
image20.png
research

SYNTHESIZING RESEARCH

affinity map

I sifted through the important insights from the interviews and put them on sticky notes so that I could uncover patterns. The main tasks that could be made more efficient with this app were splitting costs, finding information from others, and communicating effectively.

IMG_2874.jpeg

In addition, there were two distinct user groups that came out of these interviews so I created my two groups:

empathy maps

image32.png
image35.png

From these two Empathy Maps, I created two personas:

image15.png

SABRINA THE PLANNER

Sabrina is the one making the google doc, texting the best Airbnb and divvying up Venmo requests at the end to ensure everyone is compensated for. She is what gets an idea off the ground and ensures every trip runs smoothly. However, her biggest problem? Getting people to listen. Rallying the troops to all book the same flight is more difficult than finding Peanut Butter in Italy.

image12.png

TOM THE COMPLIANT

Tom is always down for a trip, no matter the destination. He loves suggesting ideas, finding cool places, and traveling but not the planning portion. In fact, if other people weren’t doing the planning, Tom probably never would have left his home country. Tom is a great person to travel with because he is always going with the flow, but when it comes to planning, he wishes there was a way to keep up with everything. 

HOW MIGHT WE

  1. How might we make it easier for students to communicate what they want to do/where they want to stay on weekend trips?

  2. How might we make it easier for students to budget and split costs on weekend trips?

  3. How might we make it easier to share information about your weekend trips and see others’ abroad advice?

IDEATION

ideation

user stories

The goal of these user stories was to find out the Minimum Viable Product that I would be designing. By coming up with the tasks users would do and then prioritizing them, it was easy to narrow it down to the MVP.

image23.png

information architecture

sitemap

Now that I have figured out the important tasks my users will have to conduct, I created the blueprint to the application to show what the pages will look like when navigating through the pages.

image26.png

userflows

I identified 5 red routes for this app: 

image18.png
image22.png
image16.png
image13.png

sketching

Now that I know a strong base for my red routes it was time to create some sketches of screens. Red Routes include: Login/Signup, Create Trip, View Trip, Add Cost & Add Activity.

LOGIN

Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.34.38 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.00.01 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.38.29 PM.png

VIEW TRIP

Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.41.25 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.00.38 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.00.44 PM.png

CREATE TRIP

Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.38.29 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.00.14 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.00.20 PM.png

ADD COST

Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.00.44 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.00.57 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.01.08 PM.png

ADD ACTIVITY

Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.00.38 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 2.01.18 PM.png

GUERILLA USABILITY TESTING

I conducted Guerilla usability testing in order to see any initial problems with the preliminary designs. I asked five different subjects to: 

  1. Sign up as a new user

  2. Add a new trip

  3. View Your Trips

  4. Add a new activity to trip

  5. Add a new cost to the trip.

Insights:

  1. The add trip button was not necessary once you entered the trip

  2. Users were confused about what the symbols mean on the trip page

DESIGN

DESIGN

WIREFRAMING

From here I created wireframes where I iterated my designs based on the insights from Guerilla testing and included more screens to represent more of the user flows.

image21.png

ui design

The time had come to start thinking aesthetically and focus on the UI of this project. I wanted a design that evoked youthfulness. The goal was to simplify traveling and ensure a positive experience so it had to be simple but fresh. To match the target demographic it also had to be adventurous, fun, modern and chic.

Brand Personality

image17.png

Mood Board

image11.png

Mission Statement: Make planning weekend trips easier by providing easy to use communication, budgeting and itinerary building features while also, building a community that loves to travel, explore and share the best part of their trips.


Vision Statement: To take the stress out of abroad by creating a place where planning trips and finding advice is simple.

style guide

image28.png

hi-fi screens

evolution of screens

Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.34.38 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.38.29 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.35.01 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.38.38 PM.png
image34.png
image24.jpg
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.41.25 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-02-23 at 1.41.31 PM.png
image30.png

TESTING

testing

After creating all my screens, I put them into InVision and created a prototype so that I could conduct my first round of usability testing. I recruited 5 participants and asked them to complete 9 tasks. My goal was to uncover any usability or design issues in the mockup and see if the overall idea was implemented successfully.

ROUND 1:

  1. Every user who had studied abroad said they would have loved to use this while abroad

  2. Loved the look and there were no major usability issues

  3. Changes needed

    1. Need to change some of the Copy

  1. Feed -> Explore

  2. Send Message -> Message

  1. Need to change Add Cost Screen

    1. Add a Total Section

    2. Add a place to divide it unevenly

After I made these iterations, I then tested 5 different participants with the new designs. I made the tasks more vague and tried to get a more diverse pool of participants. This round,  I wanted to challenge the participants even more, while also testing to see if the changes made were effective.

ROUND 2:

  1. The branding needs to be implemented throughout the design more

    1. Implement the logo across all screens 

  2. Need to advance the cost section

    1. Add a place to add receipts for meals  

  3. Overall, for both rounds it was very easy to use and there weren’t any major problems 

reflection

After months of research, planning, synthesizing, designing, ideating, testing, etc I have finally created a product I am truly proud of. The biggest takeaway I learned was to listen to those who also can benefit from the solution. Empathizing with the user group I was creating allowed me to come up with features I never would have thought of on my own and left me with a better product than before. Hearing people say that this is something they would love to use, made the whole process worth it. 

bottom of page