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We are building an AI-powered travel planner that helps users save time and money spent in travel planning.

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Lazy Traveler

HCI Assignment 5

Karan Sharma,

Pallak Srivastava,

Sahithi Kanakamedala,

Snigdha Gupta

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What Problem We Are Solving?

What Problem We Are Solving?

01

How We Identified User Needs

02

How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

03

What We Learned?

What Comes Next?

04

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Young adults currently rely on GPT/Bard, Google, and other such tools to plan their trips.

The process is inefficient,

time-consuming, and not personalized.

What Problem We Are Solving?

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How We Identified User Needs

What Problem We Are Solving?

01

How We Identified User Needs

02

How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

03

What We Learned?

What Comes Next?

04

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Key Insights from Interviews:

1.     Users leverage Google Search, ChatGPT, and travel blogs for planning trips. The planned itinerary created by these tools is not personalized

2.     Planning takes up most of the customer’s time

3.     Customers would not additionally pay for a Travel Planner but are open to try a solution that is customized to their needs and allows them to plan their trips quickly

How We Identified User Needs

We conducted interviews with 12 users, mostly students or working professionals

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We created an affinity diagram with the data points from our interviews by stacking up data into groups and identifying the broader themes until we are left with the main concept

How We Identified User Needs

“I love to travel”, “I use online tools to plan a trip”, “I find travelling to be expensive and time consuming”, “I want to plan my travel efficiently”, “I find trouble in finding good suggestions”, “I am a planned traveller”, “I am a planned traveller”, “I have not found a new product for travel that I liked”

Efficient Travel Planning is what I enjoy the most”,

“I aim for value for money travel options”,

“I use apps but they are moderately efficient”

“Online Travel Planner that creates Budget-Friendly Itineraries Quickly”

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Customer Journey Map:

Core Journey:

  • Step1: Research using Google/ChatGPT to create a travel itinerary
  • Step2: Research to book tickets and accommodation
  • Step3: Go on the trip

Breakdowns:

  • Information overload and confusion during planning stage
  • Time-consuming research for deals and bookings
  • Need to visit many websites to research and book tickets, accomodation

How We Identified User Needs

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How We Validated User Needs with StoryBoards and Speed Dating

Based on our crazy-8s we voted on the ideas keeping in mind the user needs. 

Our voting criteria was to consider ideas that caters the most important, obvious, and impactful user needs.

Based on our voting the following user needs were prioritized:

    • Personalized Itinerary Generator
    • Travel Bookmark Collector
    • Trip Expense Splitter
    • Packing item checklist

We created storyboards for these user needs and conducted speed dating sessions with our target users.

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Users ranked our storyboards on a scale of 1 (low) - 5 (high) based on how effective/relevant it was.

​Users expressed rationale for every score and that helped us understand these:

  • Users found splitting expenses and personalized itineraries helpful and rated an expense-splitting app highly convenient.
  • Users expressed feeling overwhelmed by trip planning due to the abundance of online information and emphasized the need for real-time data in planning tools.
  • Users rated the idea of automated trip bookings as inconvenient as they wanted the flexibility to customize their trip plans.
  • Users face issues while planning packing lists for their trips and found shared lists useful for avoiding redundancy during trips.
  • Users are not interested in paying for certain features such as packing lists, or expense calculators.

  • Users were most interested in collaborative itineraries where they could get travel updates of their friends ​on the trip and collectively bookmark all important information in one place

KEY LEARNING

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How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

What Problem We Are Solving?

01

How We Identified User Needs

02

How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

03

04

What We Learned?�What Comes Next?

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  • An AI-powered travel planning App
  • Builds personalized trip itineraries
  • Saves travel planning time

What are We Building?

How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

  • Eliminate travel planning anxiety
  • One Super App for travel planning
  • Optimize user's Time & Cost!

Why are We Building?

  • Mom Test
  • Synthesis
  • Speed Dating
  • Interactive Prototyping

How are We Building?

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The first page

user sees after signing up

Home Page

How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

Itinerary Page

Travel Page

Personalized

itinerary for user based on their preferences

The page displays all commute options for the user

Stay Page

The page displays lodging options for the user

Restaurant Page

The page displays relevant restaurant options for the user

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Key Features

  • Personalized itineraries

  • Book your travel & stay directly from the app

  • Explore and bookmark your favorite restaurants and cafes

Design Choices

  • Aggregated information based on preferences

  • Simple and easy to use

How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

Design Challenges

  • Color scheme choice could be better

  • Liked the product - need improved designs

  • Design demanded to be more intuition-friendly

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USER TESTING PROCESS

Conducted constructive customer surveys - Mom Test

Performed synthesis using affinity diagrams and understanding customer journey for a traveler who likes to plan

Orchestrated speed dating using storyboards and understood user's prioritization based on the user needs

Customer-centric prototyping to obtain honest feedback without biases

PARTICIPATION FEEDBACK

Users felt overwhelmed even with existing AI solutions

Major pain-point: Not personalize and updated information even with existing AI tools

Collaborative itineraries were most expected

Overall the product was not the best design, but felt could be used if maturely launched

NEXT ITERATIONS

Rework on design

Enable toggle between pages

Improve color scheme and make it accessible

Make the design more intuitive for user and add more features

How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

Allow users to brainstorm and think out loud Do not add bias by giving out spoiler or idea of the app Ignore compliments and continue questioning

KEY LEARNING

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What We Learned? What Comes Next?

What Problem We Are Solving?

01

How We Identified User Needs

02

How We Empower Travelers to Save Time & Plan Better

03

What We Learned?

What Comes Next?

04

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The product very efficiently pulls up curated itinerary for its users while offering several other valuable suggestions to save time and money.

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  • Simple to build AI Engine
  • Easy connectivity with other travel apps using an API
  • Fits several use cases and provides value addition to end users​

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Thank you

HCI Assignment 5