UI/UX | Brand Identity | Creative Direction

Introduction

Traveling can be stressful, and is one of the few reasons why people avoid going abroad all together or are nervous to take the first step. For a first time traveler, going to a new place can be a little nerve-wracking…and then there’s the planning stage. Booking the ticket is easy, but then figuring out what you’ll be doing, budgeting, packing and all the little details can become a little overwhelming.

In the present day, there’s plenty of travel apps out there to assist the modern day globetrotter, but there isn’t quite anything that helps you do it all in one place. When you’re using multiple apps, screenshots, emails for bookings, reminders and other travel-related tools, it’s easy to get disorientated, unorganized and lost, contributing into the little annoyances that can stress you out. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to book, plan and organize all of your reservations and itineraries all in one place?

Pinpoint was created with the idea to be a traveler’s ultimate planning companion— a mobile application that can help you plan, book, schedule and organize anything related to your travels. No need to sift through your emails anymore to find that reservation number, or trying to sort in your phone’s calendar to keep track of planned activities. Traveling with multiple people? Pinpoint is also a collaborative tool, complete with the ability to make communication between groups seamless and easy.

As the sole designer for this project, I was responsible for all aspects for the creation of Pinpoint. This included conducting research, developing, branding & designing, prototyping and user testing.

*Please note that this is a concept project.

Research & Discovery

User Research & Interviews

Secondary research was conducted to first validate the issue at hand: travel-related stress associated with the planning and organization process. Many studies and research showed information relating to negative emotions relating to traveling, including mishaps, things not going according to plan or forgetting to pack something. To further validate the issue, I moved onto primary research and conducted user interviews with five people who had little to no experience with traveling but desired to do so. This criteria was chosen to allow me to tap into the mindset of those who could benefit from a solution to the issue. The key part of these interviews were to validate travel-related stress and what triggers these types of emotions. Specific subjects including safety, budgeting, preparedness, planning/booking and searching for excursions were mentioned and evaluated. As predicted from secondary research, the key negative emotions were worry, nervousness, and stress. While the focus was negative, a positive emotion of excitement to travel was consistent throughout the interviews.

Some of my interview highlights included:

"My preferred method of vacationing is cruising, because everything is already planned and set for you. It’s super easy, and I don’t need to worry or stress out about anything. If something goes wrong, the cruise line will sort it out for me.”

“I wish I could just plug in my interests into something and it could generate an easy itinerary for me or suggest things to do that align with what I like. That way, I don’t have to do so much research because there’s so many options.”

“Everything about traveling stresses me out. Traveling alone also makes me nervous. I’ve seen Taken, and that scares me.”

Key Findings

A major part of my research was the observe and pinpoint typical emotions people felt about certain topics/events while traveling. The four emotions that were repeatedly brought up:

In addition, some of the common themes that came up during my interview sessions included:

Lack of Preparedness:

Interviewees were asked to rate on a scale from 1-10 (10 being the most prepared), how important it is for them to be prepared for their travels. The responses scaled between 8 to 10, with many noting that they want to make sure they are as prepared as possible when traveling. Fearing that they are not prepared enough for any mishaps or general issues contributed to their stressful thoughts.

Solo vs Accompanied Travel:

When asked if they preferred to travel solo or with companions, 4 out of the 5 interviewees preferred a partner. Interviewees noted that an additional travelers or traveling in a group help balance out responsibilities, provide comfort and assurance. In turn, stress is alleviated.

Safety & Awareness:

Being aware of the destination about culture and safety were prompts that came up multiple times throughout interviews. Interviewees expressed concerns about being aware of the local culture, language and safety. These concerns contributed to their nervousness, whether it was afraid of being accidentally disrespectful to local culture or being sensitive to local crime. 

Affinity Mapping

From my user interviews and research, I had pinpointed a handful of attributes that contributed to travel stress and in a perfect world, I would want to create a solution that addressed every aspect. I sorted and categorized each of these highlights into groups: Emotions, Concerns, Preparedness, Resources, Activities & Companionship.

With these notes, I created five "How Might We" problem statement questions and gathered possible solutions. Ultimately, I decided to narrow down to focus on one, tangible aspect: the planning process.

"How might we make the planning process easy, simple and convenient for the user?"

Personas

Based on everything I had learned in my research stage, I created two personas to help remind me of the users and problems I was trying to serve with my solution.

Each persona was suited with a short profile, their goals, frustrations, motivations and experience with technology as the solution in mind would be digital based. These personas were crafted from the research I had conducted from my interviews; gathering the concerns and desires that my interviewees had expressed.

Irena was created as persona #1, an un-experienced solo traveler who had budget and planning on the brain. Jackson was created as persona #2, a traveler with some experience along with a companion who was more concerned about planning activities and exciting things to do while abroad.

Designing & Ideating

Sketches

With the brand and user research completed, I started the design process with paper sketches to quickly map out how I wanted the application to function. These rough sketches allowed me to jot down vital functions, as well as an idea of how I would like my screens to look. These would come to life digitally in the next step as my low-fidelity prototypes.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

After I solidified my paper sketches, I translated them to digital low-fidelity mock ups to help better visualize the concept. Using Sketch, I created a few screens that would eventually be used for my first round of usability testing.

Wireflows

Once my low-fidelity mockups were finished, I decided to revisit my user flows and integrate them into my mock ups. Wireflows were created to further help visualize the user journey within the application, showing touch-points and functionality.

User Testing

To validate my initial designs, I did a round of usability testing on my first digital prototype using low-fidelity mock ups. I recruited 5 participants to navigate through the screens of a static prototype and tasked them with simple requests such as creating an account. A portion of my testing was remote, with the participant screen-sharing so I could monitor their actions and the rest as moderated, in-person testing.

As I made observations with how the participants reacted to the functions presented, I would use these notes to further refine the screens. Some recommendations included:

• Labeled icons

• More intuitive buttons 

• Multiple ways to add events/activities if one method isn’t evident enough

The next step was to evaluate these recommendations and figure out if they would add value to the next round of prototypes.

Brand Development &
Identity

Designing the Brand

Every product needs a strong brand personality and the elements that allow it to connect with its users. A mood-board including inspired imagery, colors and UI elements was developed to help begin the visual design process. The goal was for the brand to visually feel airy, simple and trustworthy. 

Brand Identity & Platform

Pinpoint was chosen as the brand name, embodying the element of organization and preciseness. A strong, bright logo brought the brand to life - using color theory to select teal and spring green hues as the main brand colors to evoke warmth, familiarity and stress-relief. 

The brand's ultimate goal is to create a seamless, easy and simple planning experience for its users. We want to inspire those to travel and not let stress get in the way of having the time of their lives. With this, brand attributes were selected to help Pinpoint stay true to its identity:

Trustworthy | Effortless | Confident | Genuine

Final Prototyping

User Interface

After implementing and adjusting the design after the first round of usability testing, it was time to create high fidelity mockups. Using Sketch once again, I stayed true to my visual inspiration, following a clean and minimalist look in the interface. The splashes of color pulled from my visual branding kept the look interesting, but still fresh at the same time. I implemented a gradient to stand out from the competition (TripAdvisor, Expedia and TripIt).

The high fidelity mockups went through an additional two rounds of usability testing before the refined, final look presented here.

Final Reflection

Reflecting upon this journey, there are many things I have learned along the way that helped drive this solution. Through this discovery process, I learned to narrow my focus from all the ideas and possibilities. From a research perspective through my primary and secondary research, I discovered that travel-related stress can appear in many different ways and not just in the ways I had personally experienced but helped validate a key point where that stress was sprouting from. I was able to eliminate my own personal bias by really learning about other people’s emotions, thoughts and experiences and how I could use that information to create a solution that accommodated my key audience.\

For my next steps, I would like to explore the other areas of how Pinpoint can work to cater to people’s ease when planning a trip, as well as formulate the other areas of the application that I had built screens for but did not get into depth with. At the beginning of this journey, I had ideated multiple other extensions of how Pinpoint could go and would like to continue researching those other branches.