Geo Stories - UX Design

• The problem I suspect is that adventure travelers don’t know which interesting location they are missing.

• The problem I suspect is that adventure travelers would like to live like a local rather than feel like an outsider.

• The problem I suspect is that adventure travelers feel unsatisfied doing touristy things.

• The problem I suspect is that adventure travelers would often like to find something interesting to see/do near their accommodations rather than traveling a long distance to specific destinations.

Research Plan - Interview

What motivates people to volunteer? What keeps them from doing it more? We recruited 5 people via a screener survey to help us answer this question.

1. Research Goals:

• Travelers are interested in unexpected encounters and experiences while traveling.

• Travelers are interested in visiting non-touristy places on trips.

• Travelers are interested in getting to their destination in clear and linear steps to avoid wasting time.

2. Motivations:

• Travelers prefer to have adventurous experiences to broaden their horizons.

• Travelers tend to share unique experiences in out-of-the-way places, rather than visits to famous destinations.

• Travelers rely heavily on their phones.

Painpoints:

• People don’t want to travel with a tourist group

• People don’t enjoy making a travel plan

• They want to dive deeper into the local culture

• People regret when they didn’t go somewhere unique

Primary Goal

People who enjoy traveling want explore hidden non-touristy destinations in clear and linear steps.

- Tripadvisor: International Yelp (Yelp for travelers)

- Couchsurfing: Allows backpackers to meet people while traveling

- Geocaching: A GPS-based treasure hunting platform

- Pokemon Go: An AR location-based scavenger hunt app

- Travel Agencies

- Airbnb: Platform for booking private homes

Problem Statement:

People who enjoy traveling need a way to explore hidden non-touristy destinations in clear and linear steps because they want to have unique experiences on trips that broaden their horizons.

Hypothesis:

We believe that the Geo Stories app will allow travelers to explore hidden non-touristy destinations in clear and linear steps as a way to achieve their goal of discovering unique experiences that broaden their horizons.

What are your overall objectives for the project?

Giving people a new way to travel.

What problem(s) are you solving?

Tourism is usually destination-oriented. This product is focused on the journey itself and the experiences along the way.

What user goals are you making possible?

Users want to have unique enriching travel experiences and explore places off the beaten path.

What is/are the main takeaways from your research findings? Briefly recap what you learned.

• Travelers need adventurous experiences to broaden their horizons.

• Travelers tend to share unique experiences in out-of-the-way places, rather than visit famous destinations.

• Travelers rely heavily on their phones.

• Overall finding: People usually explain things differently; actually they mostly talk about the same underlying ideas.

Who is your target audience?

Adventure Travelers / Backpackers

What is your MVP?

The MVP will be to write several treasure hunt stories for specific locations with minimal gameplay elements that require no development (QR codes, word puzzles, etc.) and let participants try them out. After this, build an app prototype to do usability testing.

Constraints have to work with?

Content: Need to find good storytellers to create treasure hunts

Timing: Need time to test stories to make sure all created stories are findable and playable

Technological: AR implementation would be costly and time-consuming

Is there anything else you think might help us understand what you’re proposing?

This project is for travelers who are interested in exploring hidden places by finding and solving clues in order to get to their next destination. Human curiosity will be an important part of this project’s stickiness. On the business aspect, the project will bring huge possibilities with partnerships in the game and travel industry. The potential for integrated ad-revenue is huge. Also, it's a new way to connect people to each other and places.

Feature Prioritization:

I used one of my favorites method - MSCW to Prioritize the main features of the product. Considering the absolute necessary functions of this product that user needs to accomplish the primary user flow and key user tasks (that align with the primary user goal).

Low-fi Sketch of MVP

Make sure it’s easy to read and refrain from too much detail. Consider some additional content needs to supplement these sketches to allow users to test them. Keep tit simple.

Main Features:

• GPS-based discovery: Users directed to exact locations to discover hidden stories and movie toward the destination in clear and linear steps.

• Nearby: Convenient to start the game without a plan

• Find a partner: Able to make friends during the trip

• Shareable: Able to share unique experiences with friends

Feature Research:

Why Reviews:

50% of consumers read reviews before booking, according to Tnooz.

Why Share:

Nielsen research found that travelers spent more than 50% of travelers checking social media for travel tips. Over the next 10 years, travel industry experts predict that the digital travel space worldwide will expand at an annual rate of 3.8% to reach $11.4 trillion.

Why AR?

ADI found that social mentions for travel and AR/VR-related experiences have increased 13% year over year (YoY). Social mentions about travel-related wearables also increased (44% YoY)

I used card sorting to evaluate the information architecture of a site. In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups.

Similarity Matrix: Identify strong card pairings and potential groupings

This view shows the proportion of your participants who grouped any 2 cards in the same category. For each pair of cards, the intersecting cell shows the percentage of participants who grouped these cards together.

Dendrograms: Understand which card groupings have the strongest agreement

Our 2 dendrograms show what proportion of your participants agreed with particular card groupings.

All cards are listed down the left-hand side of each dendrogram, while the axis along the top measures the level of agreement across participants. Clusters closer to the left indicate that more participants agreed with this grouping.

As I have 6 completed participants, the best merge method will be most useful for the analysis.

https://invis.io/E4RYUXY7Z6S