THE BRIEF
Since its launch in 2016, Google Trips has been gaining steady popularity as a travel planning tool for mobile. Parsing travel information in your Gmail inbox to plan individual trips within the app along with Google’s own crowdsourced travel reviews and information, it's a powerful tool to have on location wherever you are. With the added convenience of Google Maps, users can pin spots to the map and have the app will fill in the day’s itinerary.
The app is still limited, however, with the capability to share Trips with others made available just last year in 2017, but no capability to collaborate on planning a trip with friends. Other users of the Google Trips app are able to see trips shared with them, but not edit. Adding this capability to plan a trip with multiple people and providing the tools to communicate with each other within the app--as well as a desktop extension that syncs to the mobile app since people generally book items on a desktop device--would give Google Trips the boost they need to gain the upper hand in the travel app market.
THE PROCESS
Research:
Secondary and primary research like market research, competitive analysis, interviews, persona creation, as well as storyboarding.
UX Strategy and Development:
Using the pains and goals of our persona, sketches and a site map were developed
Interaction Design:
User flow with initial wireframes help to capture the possible direction for the mobile app
UI Design:
With Google's current UI and functionality in mind, wireframes were generated
Prototyping & Testing:
User testing of a high fidelity prototype of the mobile app paired with desktop extension followed by an affinity map.
RESEARCH
Market Research, Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, Persona Development, Storyboarding
RESEARCH GOALS
• What are Google Trip's secondary competitors?
• How do people use their mobile travel apps? Do they need a collaborative feature?
• What are other methods with which people plan group trips?
• Do people mainly do their booking online or with their mobile devices?
• What features would be needed to plan a group trip effectively?
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Four of the leading mompreneur websites were examined
STRENGTHS:
Collaborative feature already for groups, countdown clock for flights, parses emails for trip and travel info
WEAKNESSES:
Need to pay $49/year to unlock sharing itinerary, free version has moving ads, doesn't display airline terminal info
STRENGTHS:
Different membership payment options like a monthly option, corporate option, and a one-time lifetime payment, call to actions easy to find, membership site for moms in all business, promise of exposure opportunities to site network for members, events sorted by calendar date and color coded per location, Start a Chapter of BAM easily in another city
WEAKNESSES:
Mistakes with site navigation links when clicking on Member Directory, same with clicking on About,
STRENGTHS:
Events in 28 cities, integration with Eventbrite to save events on personal calendars, paid VIP program for discounts at retailers across country, blog, recipes, kid checklists, verification with contact form messaging, FAQ section, upcoming events feed drawer
WEAKNESSES:
Hidden navigation on home page, Contest & Sweepstakes etc. under additional hidden nav drop down at bottom of left side of blog, inconsistencies on site including checklists available in Blog but not on main nav under Resources, hard to locate items like checklists, call to actions hard to find
STRENGTHS:
Free,
WEAKNESSES:
Sponsored by products like marketing software, comes across spammy
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: In addition to these apps, many people like to arrange travel with friends via shared spreadsheets like Google Docs as well as group chats and group pages on social media like Facebook. Incorporating at least a few of their most common features into Google Trips would be especially useful.
1:1 INTERVIEWS:
Examining the goals and pains of potential Google Trips users, variables are mapped and interviewees with the most in common were identified.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: 5 participants aged 27-42 were interviewed. Interesting findings were that the more experienced the traveler, the less willing they were to compromise on their trip details.
INTRODUCING ALEX
The Tech Savvy Vacation Planner formed from Sujed & Stefan's shared variables since they had the most in common
STORYBOARDING
Planning a group trip among friends
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS:
Collaboration is most definitely a necessary feature for every travel app, as competitive analysis and interview results show. Most interviewees expressed that they already use a collaborative travel app like TripIt or spreadsheets that were shared on top of emails and chat groups. Everybody also preferred to book and research travel items on their desktop computers so I had to either add a feature to Google's current Travel Guide functionality in their search engine results or design a desktop extension to pair with Google Trips on mobile. I chose to do the latter since it would make it possible to incorporate the communication aspects of the feature addition like commenting and liking without changing the browsing experience and users could collapse the extension window to close that feature when desired.
UX Strategy & dev
Site Map
SITE MAP
This is Google's current Google Trips site map, with the two new page additions of Invite Friends and Share With Friends, as well as all pages with new collaborative features like commenting, liking, and other compatible changes in purple.
Interaction design
User Flow, Low Fidelity Wireframes
USER FLOW MOBILE
User flow of the Invite Friends feature when inviting friends using emails to collaborate with the trip on an iphone.
USER FLOW DESKTOP EXTENSION
With a click of the extension icon in the browser circled in orange for this flow, users can add items to their synced trip Saved Places window by saving it or favoriting it from the dropdown currently available on Google Travel Guide. Users can also comment and like items as well as share the trip with friends from their laptop. In this flow, the user adds the Old Cathedral of Coimbra to Saved Places. Active areas in prototype circled in orange.
UI Design
Matching Google’s Current UI
GOOGLE TRIPS MOBILE APP
The UI for the new Invite Friends page as well as Share Trip page along with what commenting and liking an item would look like.
GOOGLE TRIPS DESKTOP EXTENSION
What the UI for the extension's window would look like along with the Invite Friends feature. Users can swipe right and left over the window to access the different cities saved in Saved Places. Additionally, hovering over the Favorite icon allows users to see who added the item.
Prototyping And Testing
Prototypes were developed with Invision
USER TESTING:
Five participants were chosen between the ages of 25-42 to test first the mobile app, then the desktop extension prototypes
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: I learned I needed to announce which operating system the prototype was for when testing, especially on mobile, as symbols like the share icon can differ greatly. I also realized I needed to make active areas on the prototype a little bigger on the mobile prototype because fingers. All users were successful in completing tasks.
IN CONCLUSION:
All users tested in person and video recordings were made of 4/5 testers. All expressed that they did not know Google Trips and Google Travel Guide existed. Tasks were completed pretty quickly and users understood the significance of the pairing of desktop extension to mobile. Unlike Tripadvisor and other similar travel sites which have its items consolidated in a website, Google's items are results, making it essential to separate the items from all personalization and communication within the search engine. Users all agreed upon discussing this project after testing that Google would indeed have a significantly more powerful product if it allowed for collaboration since all had Gmail email addresses and used Google as their first step to travel research.
THE UPDATE:
Changes based on the above findings were made to the prototypes including cleaning up the extensions area of the desktop extension prototype to contain only the Google Trips icon as well as adding an extra screen to the mobile app that indicates that there is a desktop extension users should download to pair with their mobile app.
