From Manual Entries to Guided Efficiency: Designing a Setup Wizard for Travel Agencies
Overview
Tripr is a Brazil and Portugal-based startup in which I had the pleasure of working with whilst living in Lisbon. The website focuses on advertising experiences targeted toward solo travelers. Prior to my project, the founders manually entered the information about the trips onto the site. I was able to deliver an agency back-end in which Tripr is currently utilizing.
Role
UI/UX Designer - Research, Interaction design, Visual design, Prototyping & Testing
Timeline
3 weeks
Impact
Highly praised by key stakeholders
Eased burden of manual data entry from internal team members
The Problem
The existing process was inefficient, manual, and time-consuming. Travel agencies had to complete a form or spreadsheet and send it to Tripr's founder, who then manually input the trip details into the website. This created extra work for the agencies, the founder, and ultimately the end-users. The manual nature of the process led to missing key information on the front end, with dates often being inaccurate, resulting in a poor user experience for the agencies and the travelers.
The process prior to the design. Travel agencies filled out spreadsheets for the founder to enter into the site.
The Challenge
Create an agency back-end where they can perform CRUD operations and view interesting data
How might we define the easiest process for agencies to upload and edit their trips?
Primary Research
With their current website being quite minimal, I needed to figure out what people want to see before booking an experience to inform what types of information should be entered on the back-end.
In order to do this, I conducted a survey that was completed by 33 people who have previously booked travel experiences. I found out some key bits of information, including:
93.9% of users want to see a price before booking
91% want to see pictures of not only the location, but also of the agency and previous trips
78% are interested in seeing what’s included (transportation, food, etc.)
76% want to see a brief description of the experience
Finding tour operators and agents proved to be a bit difficult, but I was able to conduct 2 user interviews. Here’s what people had to say:
“I don’t like big forms.” Users want this process to be fast and easy.
“I’d like to see some data.” Agencies want to see how they can get more leads and improve their sales.
“I start by advertising on Facebook.” A lot of small agencies rely on social media.
Interviewees also noted that they store information about trips in two key ways: facebook (in which they copy & paste or just edit the listing) and Excel files. This information was vital.
Additionally, both said they would indeed use an agency back-end or dashboard because they like to have control over the information they are providing to their potential customers.
Who am I designing for?
Now that I’ve gathered some crucial information, I really needed to empathize
I crafted a user persona to further understanding who I’d be designing for.
Time to design!
I began with some basic wireframes, moved to mid-fidelity and did some user testing.
During user testing of the mid-fidelity, I found that users enjoyed the simple format of asking one question at a time. One key takeaway was that while they also liked seeing a progress bar, they wanted to see an actual number so they know how far along in the process they were.
After completing the 5 user tests, I decided to think about the UI design of the app.
I made a mood board in order to get a general idea of what I wanted the site to look like.
I also created a style tile so my design would remain clean and consistent.
Final Deliverables
The moment we’ve all been waiting for… a high-fidelity prototype!
Some Reflection
This project proved to be the most challenging but the funnest one yet! I learned how difficult it can be to get users, and that sometimes you just have to be brave and reach out to strangers. It is so exciting to be able to see my work actually implemented and have stakeholders give such good feedback. If I had more time, I would further develop the agency back-end, more specifically the registration process and gallery!