SideWayz

01. mission

I wanted to create a product that would help travelers new to a city looking to find local, off-the-radar activities. Everyone going to Paris knows to visit the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but few know how to fill the time and space in-between. Enter SideWayz, an app that gives local, curated recommendations based on proximity, or allows users to specify locations they are already planning on visiting to get authentic, interesting recommendations in the area and along the way. The app encourages users to get from point A to point B “sideways” and maximize the journey itself.

02. user insights

Once I had identified the problem space of travel planning as the area I wanted to work in, I conducted user interviews with people who had recently completed solo travel trips or group trips that involved visiting multiple cities in a short period of time. From my first round of research, a few patterns emerged:

Travelers wanted to make sure they saw the most famous attractions of every city they visited, but mostly knew what these places where and didn’t need to do much research
Most of them didn’t like feeling like tourists or outsiders, and said they really wanted to to have an authentic, local experience
These same travelers also said it was often hard to know what to see to have these authentic experiences unless they knew someone in the city, and that often they would leave a place frustrated and feeling like they hadn’t experienced the city fully
Surprisingly, almost everyone expressed dislike for learning new public transportation systems, and preferred to walk places, both to avoid the systems, and to see the city from the streets

After synthesizing my data, I created a user persona of a young solo traveler exploring a new city with little previous knowledge. It became apparent to me that the user’s primary needs were to see a city authentically and to maximize walkability between destinations, with the biggest pain point being having to spend too much time planning.

my user persona

03. the first try

My first solution was an app that could organize activities and destinations by proximity, and had a secondary feature that could add recommendations to the itinerary. I envisioned a product where users could input the number of days they were going to be in a city, and the activities they already had planned, so the app could organize the activities and recommend a trip itinerary that planned each day so the activities were nearby each other. It also had a planned feature where it could recommend an activity near the area planned for a certain day. I created wireframes and a low fidelity prototype of this product and conducted both moderated and unmoderated user tests to test both the usability and underlying solution of my idea.

Unmoderated tests revealed that the solution was usable to users, but once I spoke with them I realized that they were not convinced that the product fully met their needs. Users mentioned that getting to the point of having enough activities planned to have the app sort them already takes more time planning than they wanted to spend. So while they liked the idea of sorting days based on proximity, its threshold of time investment was still too high. Many expressed keen interest in the suggestion feature and some said they wished the app could suggest the whole itinerary.

04. the pivot

I took this feedback and concluded that my solution was not a perfect match with user needs, so I decided to pivot and create a new product. I looked back at my initial user interviews and combined them with the feedback I’d gotten on my first prototype, and a new idea emerged: If I could focus on users’ desires for local recommendations, then walkability would follow. By recommending activities near a user or near the few locations they picked out to visit, then I could encourage them to explore those areas on foot without making them do too much research ahead of time. Once I reconsidered my project from this angle I developed a new design challenge:

How might we…

minimize planning while maximizing the experience of a well-planned trip?

05. a new solution

I sketched out different ideas and ran them through another round of user tests, which allowed me to decide on the features I included in the final product. I based features around a map that shows recommendations like pins, so users can scroll around and see what is recommended near them. I added a two-fold search option so users could search for recommendations near a specific neighborhood, or between two points. The goal was to allow travelers to authentically experience the areas they were already in or passing through, and encourage exploration on foot. Many travelers I interviewed highlighted the same categories of activities they looked for, which I incorporated by creating a filter feature where users could identify and search for specific interests.

I created a wishlist feature where users could group and store the activities they found through the app, and during interviews they also expressed interest in the idea of some sort of travel journal feature. I took this idea and created a second set of lists that documented all the places a traveler had already visited and could share with others or use to keep track of old trips. Users could mark a location as visited and move it from their wishlist to their travel journal, including reviews and notes on what they thought. These lists could be shared amongst accounts as recommendations, and used to help the app create better recommendations for future users.

I based my app around informational cards that display a brief overview of each recommendation

I added a shortcut to the map where you can see a redacted version of each card, narrowed down to just the essential information

06. takeaways

I created a filter system based on categories that people mentioned in user interviews, so users could sort recommendations

I added wishlists and travel journals, to keep track of places to visit and places already visited, to keep track of and share

My final prototype was very well received by both my final round of user tests and my class. Many classmates expressed interest in using the product, and my professor was impressed by my flexibility and commitment to user-centric solutions. Deciding to pivot and completely redo my product 4 weeks into a 10 week program was a hard decision to make and created a lot of extra pressure, but in the end was a great lesson to learn and an exciting process. I discarded a subpar solution to prioritize creating a product that better served user needs, and I’m very proud of my final result. It required more work, but I found that once the product, vision, and user all harmonized, the work flowed quickly and felt easier than ever. I want to continue making products that resonate, and am committed to always putting in the extra effort that takes.

“This is really great attention to detail. Little changes like the ones you made are things most people don’t notice but that make all the difference”

— Professor's feedback on final product

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