GroupCation

GroupCation was a concept for a trip planning application to make planning road trips infinitely easier. GroupCation allows users to add different locations they want to visit to an itinerary and then autogenerates the optimal route for the user to take. It simplifies planning with your friends, as you can create groups and each group member can add attractions that interest them. GroupCation also provides personalized recommendations that would fit well into a group's itinerary.

This was my final project for the course "User Centered Research and Evaluation" (05-410). Throughout the class, we were taught how to plan and implement a mixed-methods approach for collecting information, analyze quantitative and qualitative data in order to derive insights about participants, and synthesize insights to envision new systems that fulfill participants' needs. The final product would be a poster outlining the research we conducted, insights we gained, and the solution we arrived at. The poster served as a visual aid for an elevator pitch we presented to the class.

Team

Alexander Ma, Simon Knapp, James King, Sherine Yang

Role

UX Designer and Researcher

Assisted in interviews, user testing/research, extracted insight from user input, and created our final wireframes for the app

Programs

Figma, Miro

Timeline

10 weeks (Spring 2022)

Overview

Project Brief

The shadow of the pandemic has enveloped the world for the past two years. To keep ourselves and those we care about safe, we have had to put our lives on pause. But now, as these dark days come to an end our feet itch and we yearn to venture out in the world once again. And for most of us, we look to the one place that the generations before us always have: The Open Road. Our team set out to enrich road tripping, the domain of travel that holds a special place in our hearts for capturing our wanderlust, spontaneity and spirit of adventure better than any other.

Problem

This semester we were tasked with the topic of travel planning. Specially, we were asked the question:

How can we help people make great, evidence-based decisions about where to go and what to do on a trip by helping them stitch together the hundreds of pages, reviews, images, articles, listicles, blog posts, forum posts, etc. they need to go through?

To understand this problem space, our team set out to understand the processes people used to plan their roadtrips, what pain points they encountered, what road trip experiences brought them joy and how they found those experiences. We leveraged a variety of user research methods including Surveys, Think-Aloud Testing, Directed Storytelling, Semi-Structured Interviews, and Speed Dating.

Solution

To address these needs, we developed GroupCation: the social discovery app for road trips. A user and their friends can start a travel party on the app. Then GroupCation will use each traveler’s individual profile as well as integrate into their social media accounts to identify each of their unique interests. The app combines this information with the trip plan to provide a shared content feed of attractions along the route that are tailored to the group's interests. One click and you can save it to your group's plan and be sure that everyone in the car will be happy about that stop. Thanks for listening and enjoy the ride!

Process

Setting a Foundation: Background Research and Surveys

We first conducted preliminary background research in order to get a better idea of the current environment of trip planning and apps that people use to plan trips. We conducted informational research by gathering important statistics about road tripping and tourism in general during the Covid-19 era. Next, we conducted experiential research by testing out other trip planning apps to see what tools they included for trip planning.

Next, we created and conducted surveys in order to gather important information of what certain individuals would do in specific trip-planning scenarios, along with getting a general opinion on app functionalities we were considering.

Here's the link to our survey questions and insights:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18tYgFEVPyebOgQhlf5ZhHu7KCxDEAU5c/view?usp=sharing

Gathering Information: Think Aloud Protocol and Semi-Structured Interviews

To further understand user behavior, we created a research guide that included semi-structured interviews and think aloud protocols. Each team member then conducted the research session and jotted down notes/insights. Our semi-structured interview consisted of questions on recent trips the participant has planned and what went into their planning. Our think-aloud asked users to walk us through what they're thinking as they read reviews of certain attractions, planned out a trip to a nearby city, and went through a tourists' Instagram page.

Here's the link to our interview questions, answers, consent form, and notes:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-K_m5rz0y-PcLBWME3l1RVXxbYDl_kXw/view?usp=sharing

Analyzing Notes: Interpretation Notes and Affinity Clustering

From the responses we received in our interviews, we jotted down important pieces of information which became our interpretation notes. We then grouped all the notes into specific groups to create affinity clusters based on similarity of information so that we could form big overarching insights. Based on the notes, we also created a User Journey Map and an Empathy Map.

Here's the link to our research report:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CWqTEI2FFUgYK4ngjFhMA2B0fJDkrVG2/view?usp=sharing

Final Ideation: Crazy 8s and Speed Dating

Finally, we took the insights we gathered and generated ideas for functionalities in our application using the Crazy 8s strategy. From those ideas, we created storyboards based on specific users needs we wanted to meet in our application. Then, we "speed-dated" participants to each storyboard so we could validate which needs existed and which ones garnered the strongest reactions.

Here's the link to our report for this section:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nYM7zOgwQKUJTrEfK_mPlA7Mo42nrZqG/view?usp=sharing

Insights

Here are the three main insights we decided to focus on based on our user research, along with quotes to support them that are participants said.

1. The first user need we identified is that users want every member of the travel party to enjoy the activities of the trip. The roadtrippers that we spoke to indicated that their number one priority on the trip was making stops that met the interests of every individual they were traveling with.

"We wanted to see Provincetown, a famous LGBT haven, because my friends are part of that community"

2. The second user need we identified is that users don’t want to forget about a cool attraction they discover while planning their trip. Our travelers found trip information from sources all across the web and wanted to be able to hold on to it so they can return to it later.

"If I don’t save this I might not be able to find it, and I might not be able to look it up later"

3. The third user need we identified is that users want to discover appealing attractions both while planning their trip and while they are actively traveling, giving them the flexibility to have a plan but also be spontaneous. This was a need we discovered across our group of participants, whose planning preferences varied from no planning at all to hour-by-hour.

I don't exert effort into trip planning; I want to discover interesting stops spontaneously, in low-effort way.

Solution

Based on our insights and brainstorming of potential functionalities, I created a small prototype of what the GroupCation app could look like. You can select or create groups with your friends on the main page. On the second page, you can heart certain attractions or add it to your itinerary. On the last page, you can create your itinerary, and the app will automatically choose the best road-trip route for you.