UX Research/ UX Design
Zeit, a subsidiary of Virgin, need their e-Commerce time travel site ready to launch a.s.a.p, since the company received the all clear from the governing boards.
Zeit is looking to gain traction in the travel industry with an increase in customers, as it is an novel form of travel. The website needs to focus on the ease of selecting and purchasing trips, along with alleviating travelers’ concerns about safety regarding the approved technology.
The majority of what I found researching was written pre-pandemic, and since travel trends have changed since COVID, I focused on general statistics and grouping by generations. By looking at how people travel and why- using a very broad scope was helpful in understanding users’ decisions and goals.
“– they (Millennials) are consumers who have confidence in their power to influence and in the recommendations from friends, they are natively digital in terms of how to use technology in a multitasking way, they show a strong personal interconnectivity and they share travel experiences…”
I analyzed a couple of popular travel apps that offer travel experiences to compare the look and feel, features, and complete a SWOT analysis. I also analyzed other novel travel (space) for comparison with “emerging technologies”, along with a cruise travel site since users’ to Zeit would have many common experiences (activities, limited access to leave, and group environment).
After putting out an announcement on social media, I was able to secure a wide variety of users, who have traveled prior to 2020 and plan to commence travel asap. They interviewed over the phone, because of COVID and physical distance. After completing the interviews, send out an additional survey (multiple choice and fill in the blanks) to gain more clarification on users’ needs, and received a 90% completion rate.
In the Affinity Map data was sorted by user navigation, user comments, wins, and potential solutions/ next steps.
Everyone travels for the experience and they use recommendations as their main source of information when booking trips. Both of these insights were extremely useful when building out the architecture and construction of the wireframes.
Lauren was created by breaking down the user's interviews along with the hard data of each person (age, location, sex, profession). She is a middle-class professional who lives in Philadelphia, PA, and has a partner. She enjoys traveling and leans towards being cautious with her finances/ budget.
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Sample of Mid-Fi Wireframes (Desktop) with annotations
From the brief, I knew that the goal of the logo was to be modern but historic, a blending of two ideas. I explored various techniques and styles to come up with the final solution.
Since I spent a lot of time understanding some of the mental hurdles of creating a new product and continuous refinement of the layout, testing was relatively smooth. I chose to remotely test using Maze and the feedback from Maze was incredible and extremely helpful in isolating pain points. I was able to quickly identify and resolve by reviewing the heat maps and journey each user took.
(Click on images to view videos)
There are three flows to find a trip to Pre-Colonial India from the starting page of the Zeit app.
The video shows the user flow of selecting the date for a trip to Pre-Colonial India on the Zeit app.
The user flow for the purchasing of a trip on the Zeit app.
