Traveler Diary
Mobile・Tourism・Productivity App・Ideation
Overview
Traveler Diary app was a concept developed in the course of Project Management and Implement at NCNU. Noticing that travelers’ trip plans and experience can be transformed into useful information through an organized and shareable way for others, however, there has been a few diary keeping tools originally designed for experience sharing. Traveler Diary aimed for creating an online traveler community focusing on trip plan and experience sharing.
Role User research, UI/UX design
Timeline Oct 2017 − Dec 2017
Outcome Interactive Prototype
Design problem
How can we softly shift diary keeping from individual exclusive to community shareable without losing privacy for travelers?
Design Process
Contextual inquiry & interview
Contextual inquiry is a design method stemming from ethnographic research. The idea is to observe users' behavior in the actual context of use. In this project, We did 5 contextual inquiries, each followed up by interviews, with students at school. We found that people usually consider diary a privacy. Therefore, we decided to focus on how to "nudge" them, instead of forcing them, to share experiences in a more personable way.
Initial low- & mid-fidelity prototypes
The low-fidelity prototype was made to test our initial idea. The prototype consists of several key screens of the main features of the app.
Heuristic evaluation
Based on Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristics, we conducted a trip stories sharing activity and identified three main violations in the initial paper prototype: 1. The visibility of system status was unclear; 2. Lack of flexibility and efficiency of use; 3. Not allow enough user control and freedom.
Usability testing
We ran the usability testing with our initial digital prototype with 3 participants. In general, our participants’ confusion centered on the categories of trip collection and diary page in the app. Also, the usability and accessibility on laptop devices are not convenient for travelers.
Final interactive prototype
Based on all the feedback, we made the final prototype as the foundation for the high-fidelity mockup.
How it works
Adapted from a mix of handwritten diary style and online document, Traveler Diary themed to be a selective-opening, flexible access, and communication-friendly library.
First, users keep diary that put in personal book shelf. A personal diary book can be written by a group consisted of several co-writers. With the control of content-sharing, users can decide what page of diary and what diary books to share with public.
Second, users add personal diary book into the global library so that people who are using Traveler Diary in globe mode can read, highlight the content and leave comments.
How we kept the experience simple?
High-fidelity mockup
App key screens
Hello, travelers!
・・・
What I learned
How to make a good design presentation
It was an intense but wonderful 8-week experience switching back and forth between researching and designing. In order to keep updating the progress for those who could be the sponsors for future development of the project, each team in class had to go through once-a-week in-class UX Review (UXR) process. Teams had to prepare a presentation deck to explain the design concept and rationale. Over time, by learning from the teaching mentor and many designers of other teams, I was able to learn what our team lacked during the design process. In terms of the presentation skill, I had developed some insight to improve my presentation style:
Before diving in, introducing team members and explaining the context of the project to folks that are seeing the project the first time.
Preparing an agenda/list of topics to cover so that people know what to expect.
Identifying the design problem, requirements and constraints.
Identifying who the users are and the primary user scenarios.
Using diagrams to explain user flows if that's core to the design.
Showing a comparison of the before and the after with highlights of what's changed. Explaining how the changes make the design better.
Backing up design decisions with research results.
Demoing prototypes.
Presentation is a skill that takes years to master, especially for conveying something subjective like design. I found these insights later on have helped me a lot especially in my afterward career. I will keep learning through constant practice and refining my style going forward.