Family Trip Booking Process UX Case Study
PERSONAL PROJECT
Timeline: 2 weeks
WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
This is a story about me travelling on my own with my small children and us trying to get to the airport with all our luggage when our transportation solution changed at the last minute.
KEY PROJECT GOAL
The goal of this project was simply to identify a problem in my day to day life and try to resolve it using the UX process and critical thinking.
KEY FOCUS
User Research
Product strategy
Experience design
THE PROCESS
WEEK 1
IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM
I identified the problem and created a rough plan of how to resolve it.
EXPLORING THE PROBLEM
I identified who the other users were got feedback from them, created a persona and established their needs.
IDENTIFYING THE COMPETITORS
I identified and compared the different competitors and alternative solutions people were using to achieve their goal.
WEEK 2
IDENTIFYING WHAT TO BUILD
I identified what to build and defined the requirements for the solution.
CONCEPTUALIZING THE SOLUTION
I developed storyboards, user flow diagrams and wireframes to define the experience of the solution.
I was left without options to get me and my small children to the airport
On my last family trip, I needed to get myself and my children to the airport at last-minute and was turned down by 2 different taxi services, upon arrival, due to not having the appropriate car seating for my toddler and infant.
For this type of project I knew that after identifying the problem I would need to:
Understand the goal and
the problem that needed
to be solved.
Find out if there were
other users with the
same struggle.
Find out who the
competitors were and
their pros and cons.
Come up with some ideas
of what to build.
Conceptualize the idea.
Establish how I would
measure success.
FINDING OUT IF THERE WERE OTHERS
I wanted to find out if there were others struggling with this issue. I posted it on a private Facebook group, I am a part of, called LuxMamas, which consists mostly of new moms with one or multiple children, and has almost 3000 members.
I “CAST THE FISHING LINE” AND
WAITED FOR REPLIES
I waited for answers to start pouring in, however, I didn’t get as many responses as I had hoped, nonetheless, I did prove there were other people with a similar problem, and I can assume at this point there are many more.
WHAT I GOT FROM THE REPLIES
After analysing the replies, I found patterns in the group members’ answers, in other words, they were mostly complaining about the same problems.
CREATING A PERSONA TO REPRESENT THE USERS
Based on the feedback, I started to envision and sympathize with the person who would represent the main user of the task of getting oneself to the airport with two small children in a hurry. It would help me make crucial decisions when providing them with a solution to their problem.
IDENTIFYING AND ANALYSING THE COMPETITORS
I had to compare the alternative solutions people were coming up with to get to the airport, like the bus or a personal car, but also the taxi services themselves. The solution I come up with would have to trump all of these in convenience.
COMPARISON CONCLUSION
The taxi option is a more convenient solution and the top 2 taxi companies are both cheaper and well known therefore having a very good chance of providing users with a solution to their struggle that would successfully compete against all the rest.
Taxi services comparison
I came up with 4 different ideas for the situation:
When I’m traveling with my children by plane, I want a means of transportation that can get us to the airport quickly, easily and safely, so we can catch our flight.
OPTION A
Child seating options on already existing taxi service booking.
OPTION B
New family dedicated booking process on already existing taxi service.
OPTION C
Dedicated app for family traveling on-demand bookings
OPTION D
A family/child transportation service for on-demand bookings but also birthday parties, school trips, after school foyer, etc.
MAKING A DECISION
I compared them on an impact effort matrix and chose to go with option B because it has a high impact effect but does not require so much effort to build, and unlike option A, there is an opportunity to do more than just add a car seat option to an already existing booking process.
SKETCHING OUT A STORYBOARD SCENARIO
I wanted to visualize the experience the user would have when trying to achieve their goal. This technique helps me put myself in the user's shoes and to empathize with them while flushing out any overlooked details or key issues that I could have missed.
CONCLUSION
What I got from this exercise was that this process needs to be as speedy as possible and make sure the user knows exactly when she’ll arrive at her destination, otherwise the taxi service risks her panicking and taking her car, or some other method, leaving the taxi stranded.
MAPPING OUT THE USER’S INTERACTIONS
I mapped out the interactions the user and the system would have to perform to get the user to achieve their goal. This would also serve as the blueprints for the user interface.
CREATING THE WIREFRAMES FOR THE USER INTERFACE
I created low fidelity sketches of what the interface would look like and contain. I decided to add my solution to the already existing taxi service WebTaxibecause it stood out as having the most pros out of all the services compared.
KEY DETAILS OF THE BOOKING EXPERIENCE
What truly adds value to the customer experience in the booking phase, is that the system is able to suggest the type of vehicle, based on the number of passengers and the quantity of luggage.
KEY DETAILS OF THE PAYMENT EXPERIENCE
Having these 2 payment options is important because it allows users to choose to pay at their destination and quickly confirm their booking without being obliged to take time and pay online. (This is already present in the WebTaxipayments page.)
KEY DETAILS OF THE “WAITING FOR TAXI” EXPERIENCE
The user receives an estimate of how long the ride to their destination will be, along with the estimated arrival time of the taxi, and the option to track the location of the cab.
HOW SUCCESS WOULD BE MEASURED
BOOKING
STATS
How many users booked and completed their ride.
How many of those people returned to use the service in the period of a year.
How many people are now using the normal booking process since the new family trip booking feature.
FRIEND
REFERRALS
How many customers recommended the service to their friends.
How many of those friends booked and completed their ride.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
How people rate the service and the feedback they give.
The number and severity of customer complaints.
The driver rating.
