Nomadic: a UX case study on booking travel
We have all sat around one time or another and calculated how much PTO we have remaining in the year, or perhaps tried to plan an unforgettable vacation while timeline, approved time off and budget were still uncertain factors.
Of the many apps through which you can book travel, I noticed a lack of personalization in the travel space overall. I wondered if an app that took user preferences, budget and values to proactively recommend trips for one’s lifestyle would be successful.
Enter Nomadic.
Initial Observations
The user goal of most travel apps is clear: book a flight. What happens on the journey to get there is a little more complex. When searching for a flight via a standard travel app, it’s common to exit out or switch queries due to a number of factors such as timeline, waiting on approved PTO or uncertainty as to whether or not you’re scoring a good deal. These are the key deterrents to booking for my own trips. As such, my research intended to find out if these were key deterrents for other like minded users, too.
Research & Pain Points
With a general idea in mind, I set out to discover key pain points on booking travel with an app to help guide Nomadic’s value proposition and ultimate design. I interviewed 5 subjects with varying backgrounds, age and gender, but a few key things in common. My interviewees and target users are:
My research questions were open-ended and designed to illicit candid responses and key qualitative findings as to what helps users convert quickly and efficiently when booking travel with an app. Some of my interview questions were as follows:
Answers to these questions, among several others, revealed several key pain points and opportunities of current users of competitor apps such as Hopper, Expedia and Student Universe:
Key Opportunities
Key Pain Points
Suggested Solution
Using this research to supplement my initial ideas, I developed the following core statement to kick off Nomadic’s design:
“For inquisitive adventurers looking to explore the world without draining their checking account, Nomadic provides intuitive and flexible travel booking options, providing insight and recommendations throughout the entire user experience. It takes everything it knows about a user to proactively recommend great trips and once in a lifetime experiences, all at prices people can truly feel good about.”
So what are the key functional elements to make Nomadic actually work?
Design
As a brand new student of UX design, I focused my design and prototyping on simplicity and functionality in executing the key elements of my app. I began by sketching and wireframing and went through several iterations after gaining insight and feedback from classmates and usability test subjects.
In terms of design, I knew my goal was not to reinvent the wheel. There are many travel apps out there today with successful UX and visual design elements. I drew inspiration from the most familiar booking user flows and focused my creative energy on the more novel elements of Nomadic, the user survey and “Explore” page. Check out Nomadic’s initial key pages below.
Testing
After finalizing my key pages and a functional prototype, it was time to conduct usability testing to see if my own ideas resonated with my intended user base. I conducted an interactive usability test with three users in my target audience, revealing a few areas for improvement and revision, which I’ve implemented into my final prototype. This research supplemented my initial interviews and gave insight that would not have been apparent unless a real user was interacting with the app. These key takeaways were:
These takeaways were especially enlightening as I believe they spoke heavily to the key differentiators of Nomadic. I designed it not just to be a flight search app, but one that’s truly personalized and tailored to the user, making things like account creation and user survey responses crucial. Before finalizing my prototype, I created the user survey and Explore pages — the most important differentiators of Nomadic.
Interested in seeing the full prototype? Check it out here.
Takeaways
Although I was hesitant about pursuing the travel space due to its existing saturation, I’m glad I stuck to my guns and developed an app that’s novel and useful, albeit not completely unique. Discovering pain points and opportunities within the travel space, where there are so many apps already doing it well, allowed me to learn even more about what successful UX looks like and ways to develop solutions to problems that users are neither aware of nor anticipating.
Thanks for reading!
Nomadic: a UX case study on booking travel
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