BACKGROUND

Travel Experience Platform

Beyond The Trails travel app offers seamless booking for eco-friendly destinations in Thailand, fostering vibrant communities for sustainable and outdoor travel enthusiasts to engage in insightful discussions.

The company is a social enterprise looking to innovate in sustainable travel.

USER JOURNEY AND SEARCH STAGES

Understanding How, What & When People Search

I spoke to our targeted users, ran a contextual research and user-testing on some of the most popular travel platforms and our competitors's app to find out how our users search sustainable travel destinations and experience. The discovery process helped me to construct the flow and the user journey and identified different search stages.

ZERO QUERY

Location-Based Consideration in zero query search

Based on research, users look for activities and attractions based on their current location or a destination they plan to visit.  "Nearby" query encourages user to turn on the location to give them personalized experience and recommendation.
This guided our decision to have "Nearby" suggestion at the top of our zero query content.

ZERO QUERY

Deciding on number of Suggestions & recent keywords

We keep the list of suggested keywords around 5-10 suggestions to avoid overwhelming users with too many options. The exact number of recent keywords are also adjusted based on the available real estate of the mobile device.

ZERO QUERY

Predictive Search (Personalized suggestions to easily discover sustainability options)

To prevent information overload and to carter to individual need, real-time suggestions are designed by analyzing a user's past searches, browsing history, current location, and recent searches.
‍
The prioritization within the suggestion list follows a strategic order, placing city pages (trending cities) at the forefront as destination pages are where users can discover eco-friendly attractions and sustainable experiences.

SEARCH RESULTS

Comprehensive yet relevant search results

Users often face the challenge of sifting through vast amounts of travel information to find what they need in a platform like ours. So, I design the search result page with a clear information architecture to provide the most relevant and accurate information based on the queries. For example, users can easily switch across different categories of the results.

To balance user need with the business objectives, I prioritize search results not just based on relevance, but also business priorities. Experience section is elevated above the fold to easily generate conversion rate, translating into bookings and revenue for the app.

FILTERS

Building User-centered Information Architecture

‍Our users want to quickly narrow down their choices to save time and effort in the decision-making process. Since user preference are subjective and sustainable travel trends are continuously evolving, we had a difficult task of solving the complexity of categorizing experiences.
‍
I conducted extensive user research on different type of sustainable travel and designed the information architecture. I also develop a hierarchical taxonomy that organizes activities and attractions into meaningful categories and subcategories. We finalized themes, interests, or activity types that resonate with our users through users' feedback and the results from card-sorting.

Step 1 -- Brainstorm

We utilized a lotus diagram to organize a diverse array of ideas encompassing various categories of sustainable travel. Recognizing the expansive scope of sustainable travel, we ensured that no pertinent activities were overlooked or excluded from consideration.

Step 2 - Validate

The main travel themes and sub-categories, achieved by card-sorting are validated both by suppliers who provide experiences on the platform and feedback from the travellers.

Step 3 - The results

We've established 5 core themes for sustainable travel along with 16 categories encompassing various sustainable activities. All travel experiences provided by tour operators have been organized into these categories, allowing travellers to easily filter based on personal preferences. This approach stems from our commitment to user-centered information architecture, ensuring that our platform is intuitive and tailored to the needs of our users.

Future scope

Tagging & Attributes Taxonomy Implementation at a later stage

We brainstormed the implementing of a tagging system and attributes to assist users filter activities by very specific interest, traveller type, difficulty and skill level. Given the limited availability of tour experiences with established sustainability credentials, we have decided to postpone the implementation of this feature for future consideration.

OUTCOMEs

A great success

We conducted usability tests to measure task success rates for searching experiences, completion times and user satisfaction. We also gather feedback on the prototypes for qualitative data. As of January 2024, the search module is in development after the successful usability testing.

REFLECTION

What is next

This was a really exciting and fun project for me to work on as it provides real value, involved a ton of research on sustainable travel, and detailed on search algorithm. I learned some important takeaways from this project related to teamwork, constraints and data privacy.

Connect & share across the craft:
Designing search experiences involves a significant technical aspect. In additional to understanding the basic of how search algorithm works (Data Indexing, Query Parsing etc.), it was critical for me to always share my in-progress work with the development team to streamline both design and development processes.

Constraints stimulate Creativity & Innovation:
Building a mobile app for sustainable travel comes with its own set of challenges and constraints for me. Working within limitations challenges me to find inventive solutions and think outside the box to overcome obstacles.
‍
Ethical Consideration is Paramount:
We design product that collects sensitive information of users: such as location data and travel preference. So, it is pivotal to prioritize ethical principles such as user privacy, transparency and fairness throughout the design process. ‍