ZEIT : Case Study
Background
Zeit is a subsidiary of Richard Branson’s Virgin Empire. Along with Elon Musk, they have finally made time travel available to everyone. Travellers can choose from 289 destinations which range from prehistoric times to present day. We have the rare responsibility of providing a positive planning and booking experience for the user.
Timeframe:
4 Weeks
Role:
Remote UX/UI Designer
Process
Research - Competitor Analysis, User Survey, User Interviews
Synthesis - Empathy Map, Persona,
Ideate - Sitemap, Wireframes, Prototyping
Test/Iterate - User Testing
Research
Research Goals
How are they travelling currently?
What are their current pain points?
What are opportunities for us to improve their travelling experience?
What are opportunities for us to improve their travelling experience?
Travel Trends
55% of Global Travellers attempt to make more sustainable travel Choices
Flight Routes are expanding due to demand
In the three weeks leading up to a trip there are 8x more experience searches than flight searches
Estimated that roughly half of the U.S. and U.K. will be working freelance this year
Competitor Analysis: was used to find out what are current travel companies doing right with their web presence? What features do they have that we can implement and/or improve on.
Survey
A survey was sent out via google forms to friends, family, and members of the Designlab community in order to get feedback on their current travelling experiences
Demographics of the survey respondents
50% aged 18-28
34.4% aged 29-39
3.1% aged 40-48
6.3% aged 49-59
6.3% aged 60-69
Trends Uncovered from Survey Responses
Majority of people (59.4%) book their flights and travel experiences on desktop only due to convenience and ease of use
49.6% of respondents travel with family most often.
Majority of travel is done for pleasure
The top three reasons for travel are to relax, explore different cultures, and visit friends or family
Price is the most important consideration when thinking about travelling
User Interviews
Through the interviews I wanted to find out how do users feel about their recent travel booking experiences? What are the positives and negative experiences that they have
3 people were interviewed who were aged 23, 28, and 60, and had all travelled within the last 6 months. Each interview was approximately 30 minutes. Interviewees were asked open ended questions in an attempt to find out why they travel, how they plan/book the experience, and what their pain points are.
Key Findings
Most important factors when deciding where to travel are price, and availability of travel companions
Main reasons for travel are to explore new cultures, and visit family and friends
Majority of planning and booking is done on desktop computers. However, some pre-planning may be done on a mobile device.
Biggest causes of drop off during the booking process are fees shown at the very end, and popups on the booking platform
POV:
Travellers need booking travel to be straight forward, quick, and convenient because it is currently clunky
How might we make the process of booking travel easier
Synthesis
Empathy Map
An empathy map was created with the notes from the research
Insights
Users are mainly travelling with family and/or to visit family
Price is the biggest consideration
Prefer using desktop for planning/booking
Have had travel Issues in the past
Wants Excitement
Needs
Interface to show a lot of information on a single page, and be straightforward
Confirmation from friends/family that a destination is worth visiting
To not spend a lot of money
Times and schedules to be followed
to feel adventurous
User Persona
Using findings from the research and empathy map, a persona for Aaron Guranca. Aaron is always looking for deals when travelling, he is more interested in the overall experience of the trip, as opposed to the comfort of the flight or hotel.
Ideate
A card sorting exercise was done to get an idea of how information should be laid out for this website. Should the layout be similar to a typical airline/ travel website, or will the card sort reveal that that information should be laid out differently?
Card Sorting Overview
Optimal Sort was used in order to conduct an open card sort exercise
8 participants took part in the exercise
The average time it took to complete the exercise was 10m 15s
42 total Categories were created, with a Median of 5 categories created by each participant
Card Sorting: How Were they Grouped
4 participants had a variation of “historical events” as one of their groups
Participant 2 had the most knowledge and had very detailed groups based on timeframe
Participants 1, 3, 4, and 5 grouped the cards based on topic (ex. Pop Culture, Cities etc.)
Participant 6 grouped the cards by location
Participants 7 and 8 had placed all cards in one group and ordered them chronologically
Sitemap
Taking the card sort into consideration I created the following sitemap. The majority of the sitemap is in line with industry standards for typical travel websites where one would book flights
With the sitemap ready, I ran a crazy 8’s session and came up with the following sketches for the layout of the website. A lot of the ideas came from airbnb, especially on the product page.
Mid Fidelity wireframes
With the sketches giving me an idea of how I wanted the websiite to look, I created the mid fidelity wireframes
High Fidelity Wireframes
I lot of inspiration for the look and feel of the web page was from Airbnb. I liked the way that the majority of the space within a page was with the use of images, and white space. I want users to be able to look at the images for each trip, and imagine themselves being there.
Test/Iterate
User Testing
User Testing was done through Zoom with 5 participants who tested the desktop website for ZEIT over Zoom.
Task: Find the trip related to the filming of a martial arts movie, and book a date in the third week of may.
Observations
All users went to the search bar first. They all said that since they were given a specific task, their initial inclination was to search for something related to Martial arts. However, they said if there wasn’t a specific task given, they would have browsed the website a little bit more first.
1/5 of users used the filter on the topics page to get to the final destination page. Everyone else used the top navigation menu.
Couple people said it wasn’t very obvious that the website was related to time travel. They didn’t realize until they saw the dinosaurs really
First thing that everyone clicked on the final trips page was the “See Dates” button, which I should have had scroll down to the “Prices and Dates” section of the page.
The task asks the user to book the trip in the third week of May. The third week of May is the starts on May 14. However, 4 out of the five participants chose the option which started on May 21.
Everyone said that “Time Periods”, and “Interest” were a better way to label the main navigation options instead of “By Era” and “Topic”
I created an affinity map with notes from the user tests so that I could get a feel for the painpoints, successes, and see where I could Improve, and move forward with the app.
Final prototype after updates
Next Steps
Priority Changes:
Change “By Era” and “By Topic” to Time Period and Interest
Make a more obvious indicator so that the user will realize the page is related to time travel right off the bat.
Add a heading for the Wooly Mammoth section