LOCAL BUDDY
SOCIAL | TRAVEL | UX/UI DESIGN | MOBILE APP | STUDENT WORKWHY
Student Project, GA
TIMELINE
2 weeks
ROLE
UX/UI Designer, Research, Wireframes & Prototyping
HOW
Figma, Illustrator
INTRODUCTION
Your Local Buddy is an app for travelers to connect with local people from the destination of their choice to have more authentic experiences like a local and help make their trips more culturally rich.
THE PROBLEM?
While planning a trip, most users said that the ‘fear of loneliness’ has been the biggest obstacle for those who have yet to try solo travel. Travelers use multiple sources to research before their trip but still end up with only the touristy hotspots and barely find any hidden gems online. Travelers want to experience destinations as locals, they crave more authenticity.
MARKET RESEARCH
The most common motivation for traveling solo is the desire to see the world without waiting for others. More than 50% of travelers enjoy visiting cultural attractions and trying local cuisines. A third of travelers have expressed the desire to meet locals and make new friends. While on vacation, at least three out of five travelers (62%) feel a trip is wasted if they don't experience the local culture. In addition, almost all (97%) expressed that certain aspects of the local culture are more important to them than others whenever traveling domestically or internationally.
LET’S TALK TO OUR USERS
To begin with, we conducted multiple User Interviews and got valuable information on things like-
who is our audience, what are their demographics, how much research do they do before traveling, what makes a trip successful for them, some travel pain points, and their views on personalized suggestions
Based on the data points from these interviews we validated our thoughts and gained insights on what was required to create our MVP for the “Local Buddy”.
WHAT OUR USERS THINK
After conducting 15 user interviews with our target users, we consolidated the information we got from them through a technique called affinity mapping. Mapping out quotes, preferences, likes and, dislikes of all the interviewees gave us a lot of insight into the user’s mental models. We then used these insights and similarities to build out “i” statements to help empathize with the audience and categories that worked for our product. Let’s map these out!
THE INSIGHTS WE GAINED
“I statement” | THE INSIGHT
“I highly value personalized local recommendations”
CONNECT BASED ON SIMILAR INTERESTS
“I want to be respectful, want to fit in”
MAKE CULTURAL NORMS ACCESSIBLE TO LEARN
“I like to plan my travel”
ALLOW USERS TO SAVE CONTENT
“I have to use multiple sources to research”
ONE PLACE FOR ALL
“I would love to have someone local guide me”
EASILY CONNECT WITH LOCALS
LET’S MEET ~
Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth lives in NYC and works as a Journalist and part-time copywriter. She gives back to the community and loves to meet new people. She is at a stage in her life where she works hard and has enough money to spend on something she loves to do - travel!
As much as she loves to travel, she never has enough time to research and learn enough about the place. As a writer, she misses content that adds value to all the jargon she reads. The one thing she finds lacking in her travels is real and authentic experiences and the time to have them! Her job and social life take up most of her time. She has recently been overworking and needs a well-deserved break. She wants to celebrate her birthday Eat.Pray.Love style. Although she doesn’t have too much time to plan the trip, she wants it to be memorable. She doesn’t like wasting time on sites with targeted ads and reviews. She tries hard to really understand the place she’s going to and get the most it has to offer - its true self.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
I then consolidated all the insights I had gained and worked to form one statement that would sufficiently mark Elizabeth’s problems. This statement would form the constraints of my research ahead and guide us in drawing up valid solutions.
“Elizabeth needs a social-travel platform that allows her to connect with locals and learn about new places so that she can have real and authentic travel experiences .”
H.M.W SOLVE THIS PROBLEM
I went ahead and charted out some questions using the “HMW- How Might We” method, which would guide me to a direction for possible solutions.
HMW make local culture
more accessible?
HMW help curate more personalized travel experiences?
HMW streamline the travel
research process?
HMW boost local stops and hidden gems?
HMW benefit the locals
and the travelers?
— let’s make travelers feel like insiders —
WHAT ARE OUR COMPETITORS DOING?
For my secondary research, I conducted a Competitive Feature Analysis. After looking at the travel social networking space I realized that this market was empty and that no 1 company was checking all the boxes. Some key takeaways from this analysis cemented a few features for my app.
FEATURE ANALYSIS
ADDING SOME FEATURES
With the insights gained during my secondary research, and keeping the constraints of time in mind, I dived deeper and finalized key features that were needed to make a M.V.P (Minimum Viable Product).
1. YOUR “LOCAL BUDDY”
the name for our platform came from our user interviews when a user said “Jackpot is when I have a local friend in the destination I’m going to”
2. PREFERENCE-BASED SEARCH
the most common theme amongst all our competitors and something that streamlines the search process for users was similar interests and a preference-based search system
3. INTERLINKING APPS
to make travel planning easy and accessible, interlinking between apps is vital for the users
4. HASSLE-FREE COMMUNICATION
communication between the locals and users is the base of “local Buddy”, providing a platform for easy connectivity that respects the time and space for all parties involved is necessary
5. LOCALS PROFILES
it’s important to give the locals some space for personalization on their profiles, and a means to stand out and connect to the users
6. SAVING CONTENT
it was important to allow our users to be able to save the content they needed for their upcoming trips for easy access and last-minute research
7. LOCAL SUGGESTIONS
targeted ads and promoted content are the biggest downfalls to having authentic and real travel experiences, so it was important to push for local reviews, blogs, and suggestions
USER FLOWS
TASK 1
Find a Super Local with similar interests as you and send them a message
TASK 2
Find the article on “Tipping Culture” in the destination of your choice and save it for later
LETS GET OUR HANDS DIRTY
I then created some Lo-Fidelity Sketches and marked out all the important pages we needed to fulfill Elizabeth’s user journey. This became the skeleton for our Mid-Fidelity Wireframes.
SKETCHES
WIREFRAMES
LET’S TEST IT OUT
After our Mid-Fidelity Wireframes were completed, I then conducted some Usability Tests. I got five users to test out the designed wireframes by asking them to complete two user tasks (mentioned above). I recorded their journeys and made a note of their user experience, actions they took, the amount of time it took to complete the tasks, pleasure points, and pain points. After gathering all this data I made the necessary changes and went ahead and created the Hi-Fidelity Wireframes.
USABILITY TESTING
RECOMMENDATIONS
HIGHLIGHT THE
PREFERENCE-BASED SEARCH
CREATE A SECTION FOR BLOGS/ARTICLES TO OFFER AN INCENTIVE FOR THE LOCALS
BUILD A ONE-STOP RESEARCH PLATFORM THAT INCORPORATES THE LOCALS’ POINT OF VIEW AND ADDS REAL VALUE FOR THE USERS
DESIGN A SENSE OF COMFORT
AND COMMUNITY WHILE
KEEPING IT INTUITIVE
TIME TO JAZZ IT UP
It was time to add some UI and interactive elements like colors, typography, images, card displays, hover animations, and selection variants to the prototype. It was time to jazz it up with a Hi-Fidelity Prototype!
I finally consolidated all the learnings and designed a mobile app for Local Buddy!
Click to see a working prototype!
User Prompt - Find a Super Local in Venice that you share similar interests to and send them a message!
(psst: it may be Bianca) Don’t forget to give them some sparkles(✨) while you’re at it!