"What if group travellers could get rid of common pain points with a centralized interface that simplified all disorganization and uncomfortable conversations related to group travel?"
This project was designed and developed for an academic assignment.
Problem
Travelling in a group setting can prove to be troublesome with circumstances of stress and disorganization being common, which often lead to tensions and unwanted conflict, and can oftentimes sour a travelling experience among life-long friends.
Our team highlighted three key pain points in this experience:
❗️Financial management and cost splitting between members.
❗️Differing interests and preferences in travel destinations or activities.
❗️Lack of centralized documentation storage.
Role
UX/UI Designer
Team
4 UX Designers/Researchers
1 Graphic Designer
Skills
UX/UI Design
User Research
Prototyping
Cross-functional collaboration
Tools
Figma
Google Suite
Research
To gain a better understanding of the approach that we would take for Fareshare, our team started off with in-depth research in order to grasp the experiences our target audience may be going through in the travel planning experience. Our methodology consisted of a competitive analysis and a survey.
Competitive Analysis
When we had established the idea of what we wanted Fareshare to be, our team immediately took to researching competitors to observe their key features, and where our product could fill in the gaps. We audited our direct competitors in travel planning and finances; namely Splitwise, Splid, Tricount, and Settle Up.
Survey
There was also a collective effort in drafting a survey that would contain questions specifically tailored to travel experiences in a group context, particularly with planning, cost splitting/management, and documentation storage. We aimed for this survey to provide us a glimpse into our target audience's needs, preferences, and pain points, and to gauge their level of interest in the solution we were working on.
Our target audience consisted of individuals aged 18-44 who frequently travel in a group that are likely to encounter issues with tracking and splitting expenses, arguing over activities, and sharing documents that are required for travelling. These individuals were primarily located in Western countries, with a strong presence in Canada, the United States of America, and Germany based on survey responses.
Our data presented us with the insights on how often people travel (in groups or individually), how they plan their travels, how they organize their documents, and how they manage the finances for and during travelling.
We found that the absence of difficulties in respondents organizing their documents created a contrast with one of our problem statements. This presented an opportunity for shifting focus on finding other potential problems that might have been missed.
The Design Process
Backed by the data and keeping our key features in mind, we began to rapidly iterate low-fidelity wireframes amongst ourselves; collectively voting on the best approach to implement as we gradually designed Fareshare. Our graphic designer efficiently crafted themed assets that we could use for the interface, such as buttons, patterns, and logos; many of which we implemented for the final designs.
By the time we had reached the final phase of the project, Fareshare looked exactly as what we envisioned it to be.
Outcome
Our team was able to successfully design and present Fareshare as high-fidelity digital solution complete with branding and graphic assets, which included the specific features we ideated directly addressing each of the identified pain points associated with the problem.
Retrospective
As we worked on the project up to completion and presentation, our team was given the chance to reflect on our strengths and weaknesses, as well as to evaluate what went well for us, and what did not. From this, we concluded that:
✅ This project provided us with skills that brought us to a new level of capability in both design and research, as we were challenged to refine our survey and interview questions, which significantly improved our workflow and approach in Figma and prototyping.
✅ Because our survey questions were not quite refined initially, we faced uncertainty with our data and began to lean towards assumptions about it and what it meant for us. We could have better paced ourselves when drafting our questions to ensure specificity in both the answers we were looking for, as this would ultimately influence our design choices.
✅ An overlap of skills between our UX designers and researchers, combined with the unique skillset of our sole graphic designer, initially made it challenging for us to delegate roles and assign tasks. However, once we found our "groove", we were able to use this discrepancy to foster an environment centered around support between our members, which ultimately allowed us to finalize everything as intended.
