GALA BREZIGAR

{ Yelp! project }

Problem

People user Yelp to find all sorts of things, expecially when they’re on vacation and in an unfamiliar place. Yelp wants to expland their offereings to be the go-to place for travelers planning their trips. They would like to have feature that allows user to create itineraries for their travels, as well as a record of their actual experiences.

Process

In order to discover the problems that users face we designed and ran some research. This consisted of a survey (95 survey responses) and 7 user Interviews. We tried to prioritise all of the features we had come up with by categorising them into ones we would implement and ones we would discard. We have created a paper prototype of the main screens and we have verified the interactions with multiple user testing.

Solution

We wanted to improve on the experience given to users by providing a more complete approach for recording experiences, share them and create personal itinearies.

User survey & user interviews

In order to discover the problems that users face we designed and ran some research. This consisted of a survey (95 survey responses) and 7 user interviews. We defined three research objectives: find out how people find things in a foreign country, identify how people organise their travel (before and during travelling) and discover how do people record and share their travel experience. People get information from a variety of sources: doing research (33%) online and getting advice from friends (24%) ranked highly. Most people record their experiences with photos particularly photos taken on their mobiles (53%).

Comparative & competitive analysis

In order to the comparative and competitive analysis the results showed that creating a list (and manage a list of places) and even recording experiences were acknowledged by other companies but not one of them provides a holistic solution. Each offers some kind of mechanism to save places a user likes, but in most cases this was just an unordered list for all items. Few companies provided a solution allowing users to create a number of lists for grouping a user’s favourite places. Furthermore most of the companies allow you to review a place, write a comment or even upload pictures, but in so doing only to support the promotion of those places.

Design studio

With enough data to begin working on solutions to the problem we collectively went through a number of brain-storming sprints, writing possible helpful features and technologies onto post-it notes. We tried to prioritise all of the features we had come up with by categorising them into ones we would implement and ones we would discard. Further iterations brought improvements and we managed to group similar features together identifying some features which were less important to be discarded. Working with those features we tried to come up with as many ideas and sketches as we could in an effort to find the best way to implement our solution.

Paper prototype & user testing

We have created a paper prototype of the main screens and we have verified the interactions with multiple user testing. The main goals of the user testing it was to understand how people interact with the new features and how these features fit inside the whole experience of a potential user of Yelp.For these reasons we tested functionalities of the main screens involved in this process: Search results Map, Location Page; and the new featuresRecording experiences and Create an Itinerary. During the process he function of recording experiences become more articulate, allow to edit and share each area separately: ratings, notes and photos or videos. The function of create an itinerary added more iterations: organizing the itinerary on a timeline, adding/cancel places and the ability of rescheduling these.

Proposed solution & future steps

We wanted to improve on the experience given to users by providing a more complete approach for recording experiences, share them and create personal itinearies.