Wanderers
Ever wanted to travel with a group of friends but it’s too hard to accommodate everyone’s schedules and preferences? Don’t want to be the one stuck being the travel mom? Wanderers aims to change that by introducing group planning and consolidating all booking into one platform.
Background
For this design sprint, our team was challenged to tackle a scheduling problem in an industry of our choice. We chose to address pain points of scheduling a trip with friends because of the difficulty in accommodating multiple schedules and preferences. We have all had a situation where we’ve been frustrated trying to plan with others. This design sprint was completed over the course of 4 weeks but work was mainly restricted to 1-2 working sessions per week. Due to the nature of the sprint and our small team, I was able to contribute to all aspects of this project.
Role
Researcher
UX Designer
Team
Sakina
Elizabeth
Timeline
4 weeks, April 2022
Tools
Whimsical
FigJam
Figma
Illustrator
Problem
Our team brainstormed to identify the problems and pain points surrounding our initial design challenge. We created additional “how might we“ statements to guide our thinking and generate ideas for how we can improve the user experience and reimagine how trips are booked for groups. We identified that for many users, it is unnecessarily difficult to plan a trip with multiple friends and the burden often falls on one person.
Design Challenge
How might we share availability with friends booking a trip?
The Solution
Wanderers is a trip planning app specifically designed for groups where users can each submit their availability and receive dates that work for the most people. The platform would also recommend the best travel deals available for the decided dates so that the group members can vote and suggest their preferred destination and then book within the same application. No individual will have to carry the burden or planning and booking on everyone’s behalf.
Ideation
Our team used the crazy 8’s exercise to draft concepts to pursue. Our main goal was to explore how scheduling can be handled when multiple different availabilities would be proposed and compared.
Next, our group mapped out the user flow for the product we wanted to build primarily highlighting the process of booking a trip with others.
The user flow helped us structure our wireframes that gave us a preliminary peek at how our platform would look. Our wireframing uncovered two main flows:
the planning phase
where users invited friends and defined the logistics of their trip (i.e. availability, invitees, confirming dates, etc.)
the booking phase
where users chose their desired destination and booked and paid for their trips
Final Prototype
Scheduling
Accounting for everyone’s submitted schedules, the platform will compare and highlight the days that work best for everyone. User will be able to vote for their top choice of dates and make adjustments to their schedules as necessary.
Booking
Booking is done within the app once a destination has been decided. Users can make their own payments and avoid having one person front a large fee and chase others down in order to get their money. This feature consolidates all aspects of booking into one platform and allows for a seamless and efficient process that does not require any external resources or tools.
Explore
The Explore page highlights your upcoming trips and counts down the days until your departure. It’s a quick shortcut to get to your trip details and gives the user something to look forward to. Additionally, this page provides additional travel opportunities to explore, highlighting last minute deals, possible solo trips and other attractions.
Trip Selection
Once dates are selected, the platform will inform users of any applicable travel deals that match with their chosen dates. Users can propose and suggest destinations and allow for a timed-voting session to come to a decision without needing someone from the group to facilitate.
