So, you want to go on holiday?
‘SO, you want to go on holiday?’ was developed as an app for my first project whilst undertaking the UX design immersive course with General Assembly. It was a challenging and exciting process that allowed me to gauge a feel for the methods I was going to be adopting when beginning my UX journey.
I began the project by trying to understand the life problems my partner Zach wanted a solution to (within my grasp — unfortunately I am not blessed with divine powers). Thankfully, he proposed the annual issue that he has when trying to book a group holiday with his friends. He stated that his major issues with the process were mostly surrounding his frustrations that one person usually has to take the reins financially and take on board everyone’s individual preferences over place and activities.
To begin trying to come up with a solution to Zach’s issue, I set about making a persona based off him to enable me to then dive into coming up with a problem statement. You will find a copy of the persona that I created for him below.
PERSONA
After creating Zach’s persona I was then able to define his issue into the problem statement that I was going to build a solution from. Zach needs to be able to book a group holiday in advance with shared input of friends over location and activities in order to not get stressed during the process. I initially really struggled with trying to create a problem statement as I felt the results always appeared very clunky when trying to fully encapsulate the issue. Although I am satisfied with the end definition, I should hope I can only get more confident and clear in abilities moving forward.
After creating both the persona and the problem statement, I wanted to create an interview that would allow me to fully understand all the issues within the process of his holiday booking and discover where I might be able to construct ideas that would ideally turn into solutions.
AFFINITY MAP
As seen above, the interview results led me to be able to draw and affinity map (a brainstorm) of all the issues that came up and the groups in which I felt they mostly suitably could be categorised into. Affinity mapping is one of my favourite stages of the process, the endless ability to alter categories thus offering multiple outcome opportunities I find highly satisfying and enjoyable. The affinity map that I have presented also contains content from user interviews that I carried out after I had initially designed with only Zach in mind. It was actually quite a poignant realisation for me recognising the importance of documenting all stages of the journey before ever editing! The major categories that effected the booking process in my user’s experience were as following ; budget, transport, organisation and their friends input (especially picky people). After the interview and building of the affinity map, I then went on to create the ‘User Journey’ which has markers that allowed me to discover where the pain points and frustrations of the process where. You will find this in the image below.
USER JOURNEY
It was clear to me that the overall process incited stress, and it was only as a result of making it through that did the user then begin to feel relieved. As soon as I understood the users original path, I then allowed myself to start envisaging an app that was going to provide some solutions to the frustration that were occurring around booking. To try and stimulate ideas quickly, I used the ‘Crazy 8’ method, whereby challenging myself to come up with new ideas every 30 seconds to see what I could come up with. This method as shown below, although new to me at the beginning of the course, has very quickly become one of my preferred methods to come up with quick solutions. I think this is primarily down to the speed of the challenge and how it doesn’t give you enough time to doubt an idea.
CRAZY 8’S
Following my Crazy 8 challenge was where I began to get slightly ahead of myself. After having to come up with so many different ideas I quickly became fixated on the gamification element of the app and wanted to start designing there and then. It was very much my first lesson in knowing to learn how to walk before you can run (however cheesy it may sound). Below is an image of my ‘User Flow’ journey which I completed after very quickly trying to process how I was going to bring my idea within the app to life.
This user flow was very basic and primarily built off my user journey but in a more visual way that I could understand the flows going both ways. From sketching it out I then went on to design the digital version in FigJam to tidy it up a little!
PAPER PROTOTYPES
Before jumping back into Figma I sketched out what I ideally was going to try and digitise. Personally, I found this super satisfying as it allowed for full range of creative freedom and let me start envisaging what the end product might look like! The above photos shows a few snaps of my drawings and some of the gamification that I had started to implement.
WIRES
After the whole process I was able to get going on Figma to start making my prototypes! Although I had started practicing using the software my original designs were very basic and I couldn’t help myself from adding colour!
I was really quite pleased with how my end design turned out but after obsessing over it for so long I couldn’t see where the errors in my work were, I thus had to pull in the experts and get it tested out so I could get feedback on the issues within the design!
USABILITY TESTING
In order to fairly test out my design, I came up with a series of ‘tests’ to see how my users would get on navigating through the app. The whole process allowed for me to talk to my users and see how what they made of the whole interface. This was done by getting them to think out loud whilst they using the prototype.
‘Tests’ one and two were set up to see how my users would get on with functions within the app. The last ‘test’ was designed so that I would be able to see whether the users could understand and navigate their way through the design to the end. The whole process gave me an important understanding of using the right language and creating the right setting to conduct professional testing.
FEEDBACK
As a result of testing I was able to have my users direct me to where they saw issues within the design or elements of confusion in which they wanted clarity. The above photo has highlighted where my users thought change could be seen. It was primarily the use of frames that I had in place which made it hard to distinguish what was a button and what wasn’t. The testing also taught me the importance in the language to use when conducting the interviews. This was exemplified in the fact that in the last ‘test’ I asked users to find review their itinerary, however, this could only be done if they made it to the final page and where they would find the button to take them back a page.
CONCLUSION
All in all, I found this project really a really exciting start to my UX journey! It taught me the important steps that need to be carried out in order to create a product that is designed specifically for the user. I am sure that as I continue to develop my skills that I may return to this project with a fresher (perhaps more refined!) set of skills in the future!
