Improving traveling experiences — Pin Viajero
Recently, I had the opportunity to work with the project “Pin Viajero”, which is a developing project that aims to improve traveling experiences within Mexico.
The idea was originally meant to challenge its users to visit those “can’t miss” places when visiting a new city and giving them rewards for completing said challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into that idea and the idea needed to evolve in order to work in the country’s new conditions.
Our problem
People right now are traveling significantly less than they usually do and tourism all around the globe is in a rut. Those who are still traveling are doing so with fears and reservations about what places to visit.
There’s also a lack of options that incentivize travelers to have different experiences when they go on a trip. The existing options are meant to provide information about what activities can be done in a certain place, but they are not helping users make easy, quick and informed decisions.
User research
To find our users real needs, we conducted surveys with 60 travelers. This allowed us to identify their main behaviors when traveling and the channels they use to find information.
These surveys showed that 76% of travelers like to talk to other travelers about what points of interest to visit, where to eat and what to do when visiting a place. It is also notable that only 45% of the surveyed travelers like to receive recommendations from people that live in the area they’re visiting. There seems to be an element of miss-trust between travelers and locals. The opinions of other travelers are much more important to help our users make decisions.
One interesting insight we obtained from this research, was that despite only representing roughly 12% of travelers, those who travel for work are the ones who are actually traveling, and will be the majority of those traveling once the pandemic is over.
To obtain even more information from users, we conducted a series of interviews with travelers; 3 with people who travel for work and 3 with people who exclusively travel for leisure.
From these interviews, we found out that those who travel for work tend to do so in a much more disorganized way, with less time to conduct research about the place they’ll be visiting and the activities that they can do there. They tend to choose activities based on available time, budget, payment options and overall, they improvise their plans. Payment options and the ability to generate an invoice are deciding factors for those who travel for work, and they often miss out on local experiences for this reason.
Those who travel for leisure tend to have more structure; they do more research, talk to other travelers, look for lists of activities on the internet or they find out about a particular travel destination from a post in social networks. They are adaptable and can change their plans but they like to have at least an idea of what they want to do. Their main issues are not finding information/recommendations based on their age or preferences, and that the information might not be contained in the same place.
Neither of the groups pays special attention to certifications that local commerces might have (environmental, service, etc) but they do consider it important that those certifications be more visible, especially those that pertain to sustainability and environment.
Our users
With this research in mind, we landed on two different users for our product: people who travel for work and people who travel for leisure. The differences between both types of users are important as their time/budget/preferences are all different but they can both take advantage of the app to help them make their trips more enjoyable.
User needs
After conducting the user research, we continued with the creation of our user journeys, which helped us identify our users’ main needs: our users need to be able to filter out the information they receive, based on their interests. They have to be able to find all of the information they need on the same site, they need to be able to see other traveler’s reviews and opinions. Some secondary needs would be allowing our users to pay for experiences directly on our platform and giving out receipts they can use to justify expenses.
Proposed solution
Our solution would consist of an application that will incentivize users to explore the places they’re visiting; it will allow our users to visualize reviews, opinions and pictures from other travelers so they can have the certainty that an activity is entertaining or fulfilling. The activities will be adaptable to our user’s schedule and interests, but it will bring them out of their comfort zones every once in a while.
The main incentive will be challenges; our users can create a challenge and the application will give them an activity to do. These activities are the “must-do” activities of an area and our users will be rewarded with pins, discounts for other local commerces and other things if they complete the challenge.
One final thing that we want to integrate into the application is being able to visualize the certifications (particularly environmental ones) that local commerces/activities have.
User flows
After defining what elements are going to be presented to the users and how, we moved to creating user flows, which would allow us to create our final prototype.
We identified two different user flows needed to show the functionality of the application: the unboarding stage and the user receiving a challenge.
Prototype
To arrive to the final prototype, we conducted a couple of usability tests with 3 users; they helped us determine if the flow was understandable, if the elements on screen were properly placed or if there were elements missing.
After the tests, we did make a few changes to the prototype, mainly pertaining to sizes of elements and changing a couple of icons which were not properly conveying their intended purpose.
Next steps
One of our most important next steps would be resolving the payments/receipts options that we want to offer on our app. This would be a huge area of opportunity for all kinds of travelers, but especially for those who travel for work, and it is something that could set us apart from other travel apps. We would need to get in contact with local commerces and have some for a pilot test.
Another area that would need to be explored with more detail is partnerships with local commerces; this is vital for the rewards obtainable through the app.
One important metric used to evaluate success would be how many challenges the users are completing, and which ones they are most interested in, which would allow us to fine tune how that area works.
