Ramble

Overview

The goal of Ramble, a conceptual app is to help explorers wander safely and mindfully, no matter where they roam.

We equip travelers with the knowledge they need to be safe away from home, including knowledge of local customs, practices, and resources; safe routes to walk; and the security of knowing other users are contributing to the community in real-time.  

My Role: UX Designer | Duration: 2 Weeks

Methodologies: Market Research, Feature Analysis, Affinity Mapping, Persona, User Journey, Figma, Prototyping, Usability Testing

Challenge

The goal of our project is to provide safety and cultural insight to travelers while they’re abroad.

We set out to explore the various platforms and brands involved with traveling and safety to understand our problem space. As avid travelers who have individually experienced moments regarding uncertainty on a trip, we hypothesized that travelers find it hard to have accurate and local safety knowledge in real time.

We leveraged user interviews to gain a deeper understanding of how travelers approach safety and cultural norms while they were abroad and learned that there lacked a centralized way to gather legitimate information on best safety practices.

Diving in to Research

We then asked, 

“How might we provide travelers with accurate and relevant safety information?”,

and set out to identify broader trends grounded in the experiences of seasoned travelers.

Most travelers used their past experiences.

• One interviewee desired to have a feature on Google map that communicated streets not to go down.

• Travelers used peer populated resources like Reddit, Google and IG to prep for their travels.

• They often used word of mouth on how to know what places to avoid.

• No one is using a centralized source to get safety information.

Persona & Her Journey

Using these insights, we were able to create our persona, our target audience.

We employed what her user journey might be like as she lands in Cambodia and is looking for a place to eat

The Area to Focus On

Based these additional insights, we revised the scope of our project to the following:

How might we provide travelers a centralized means for safety considerations?

Design Kick Off

Now that we got our research down and identified the insights, we were able to move on to our design stage. We used a MoSCow Map to determine our MVP.

During design studio, our team and I were able to single out one collaborative vision for our low fi sketches and established our product principles:

• Increase awareness and mindfulness to different cultures

• Educate travelers so that they can travel and feel the most protected while they’re abroad

• Empower travelers with a level of security based on their trips abroad in a centralized location

• Expose potential threats that could compromise a travelers safety while abroad

Mid-Fidelity Wireframe

We were then able to transition into creating our mid-fidelity wireframes and prototyping it!

Now that we had our mid-fidelity designs ready, we were able to start our first round of usability testing

Design Changes

Usability Testing Round One

We conducted usability testing with our mid-fidelity prototype to learn how well our product worked. There were two scenarios and three tasks that we focused on to help guide our users through our app.

Some insights we obtained after our first round were:

Design Considerations

• Change time on “Fastest” route

• Restructure or reword what a fast path may look like

• Rearrange by time — fastest to longest

• Add contrast and depth to the characters that indicate the groups of people

• Redefining “dining” to food habits to distinguish between clothing

• Explore sources for cultural norms to see how they differentiate things like etiquette, clothing, etc.

We found these suggestions and changes to be valuable.

High Fidelity Prototype

For the final stage of our design process we created a high fidelity prototype from the insights gained from the mid-fidelity usability testing.

Second Usability Testing

Our 2nd usability testing for the high-fi showed that users:

• Utilize the local customs page first to allow user to explore their new destination

• Include the cultural norms for dining directly on the arrival page

• Positive phrasing for safety routes

• Introduce a new alert a few meters ahead.

Next Recommendations

Our vision for fully executing our product in the future includes implementing

• KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators)

• API’s, Analytics

• Google’s Heart Framework

The major APIs we desire to use moving forward are Google Waze, Open Table, and World Health Data Platform. We chose these because they will enhance the navigation features, the dining capabilities, and ability to be informed on global health issues and hygiene standards.