Expedia Group is an American global travel technology company. It is a one stop shop for hotels, flights, car rental and events.
ProjecT:
"ADD A FEATURE" FOR EXPEDIA APP
BOOTCAMP PROJECT
TOOLS:
MIRO
SKETCH
MARVEL
INVISION
Role:
PROJECT MANAGER
RESEARCH
UX/UI DESIGN
Brief
This was a 4-day sprint for Ironhack bootcamp in October 2019. As I have been in love with the hospitality industry for years there is no surprise that my app of choice was Expedia App. The company has a popular website that is widely used around the world. This project, however, was focused entirely on the company’s mobile app for iOS.
THE GOALS
1. Analyze an already existing and highly adopted Expedia app
2. Incorporate a new feature to Expedia app based on user input
3. Create a high-fidelity prototype of a native app that reflects the best path forward based on research, iteration, and testing.
Process
Research
Preliminary Research
Preliminary research showed the importance of improving mobile booking as it is the most popular way to make travel arrangements. If there would be less "usability issues" and better functionality more users will be utilizing the app.
Market Positioning
Expedia App should find "Blue Ocean" spot on the market by going from more traditional company for online booking to more innovative all in one platform.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive feature analysis revealed that the Expedia App is lacking many functions successfully used by other travel apps (see below). This positioned Expedia in a more generic and traditional quadrant of the market positioning chart.
Qualitative Data
The data was collected from 7 interviews of the Expedia App. The data collected during interviews helped to understand the pains the user may experience when using the app.
"When it comes to trying to search for deals on the mobile app, it becomes very arduous and very hard to do so as there is no way to filter the results down based on destination!"
"I don't like Expedia. They have a really old looking interface".
"Expedia cares only about business. Hotels that pay Expedia the most will show up first on their search results"
"I trust real people's reviews and want to experience authentic places as they are"
The insights from the interviews showed:
1. Users find the company’s website having an outdated interface.
2. Users generally don’t trust the company offers the best deals on the market as they believe the results of Expedia’s search engine.
3. The app prioritizes the advertised options, not the most preferable for the user. They mostly use Expedia when money is not an issue, but go to competitors when planning not work-related travels.
4. The Expedia app is lacking many necessary features and therefore users still prefer their traditional website.
CUSTOMER JOBS
I analyzed customer’s jobs when going on a trip and found five most common stages of this process: dreaming, research, booking, experiencing and sharing. Based on the data collected, the Expedia App experiencing the most difficulty in the first stages of traditional travel — dreaming and planning.
80%
Found inability to save their favorites frustrating
65%
Did Expedia interface outdated
87%
Would love to share their favorite picks with friends
Synthesis
The findings were then summed up in the Affinity Map. This tool helped to identify the common trends for our target group. Top Gains:
* the convenience of booking on the go
* saves time
* easy to use to accomplish basic tasks Top Pains:
* limited options of the app’s features provide limited functionality
* doesn’t allow to preplan vacations
* save and share mood boards
* missing social an aspect
ideation
I generated multiple ideas. The ideas that would require the lowest effort to incorporate from the business and have the highest impact on the user made it to the Must Haves of the MoSCoW chart.
AHA MOMENT
The first stages of booking travel (dream and research) are the most important to interest the users in a trip and motivate them to utilize the app to arrange it. The majority of our target audience prefers to spend money on experiences, value authenticity of the hotels and destinations, and trust business that offers unique, specialized options (going on a week-long yoga retreat, trying the mountain biking destinations, etc.). Therefore, it would be beneficial for both the business and the users to include the Favorites Tab feature. This would allow users to save their favorite options, create mood boards, share them with others dream about upcoming or most desired vacations.
JOBS TO BE DONE
Main Job Story: When users get inspiration from different sources, they want to have easy access to their favorite options in one place and on the go when planning their trips.
New Feature Story: When Users planning a trip, they want to save their inspirations, favorite hotels and things to do, and share them with travel companions so that they can make a decision on destination easier and at the same time motivate a friend to join as well.
USER FLOW - Happy Path
Auto-created Moodboards are Easy to Share
Design
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Lo-Fi wireframes were tested with 6 users. 4 out of 6 users found the share button confusing as it was located at the corner of a mood board higher than expected.
Iteration
Mid -fi Wireframes
When preparing Mid-Fi wireframes I made sure to create better alignment and symmetry of the buttons. Mid-Fi wireframes were tested again with 5 users. The results showed a very low misclick rate of less than 16% and a 100% completion rate. So, I went on to the Hi-Fi prototype.
Delivery
Screenshots of Expedia App before the project
Hi-Fi Wireframes
The Hi-Fi wireframes show an example of how you can search for hotels in Athens, Greece and mark them as favorites. All the favorites will automatically be saved by the city in mood boards. Then the user will have an option to share the individual picks or boards in this example with their travel companions.
Prototype
Next Steps
NEXT STEPS
The next steps should be testing the hi-fidelity prototype, adjusting it if need be and adding micro-interactions.
SUCCESS & FAILURE METRICS
Only the future implementation of the feature will show if this idea was successful. It can be measured by: increase or decrease in usage of the feature; increase or decrease in brand awareness; increase or decrease in booked trips & company’s revenue.
.svg)
