Abbey
Summary
When presented with the challenge of coming up with product ourselves in a 2 week sprint, our team thought of what would be both a problem we could solve and an area we were passionate about all in one. That is how we started with the idea to make Abbey.
Abbey is a social travel app targeted to the solo traveler, specifically solo women travelers. We realized that when people travel solo, especially women, they want a way to feel safe or have more information that could better enable them to have fun without worries when they travel so they can continue to do what they want, when they want, when getting new experiences in new places.
Timeline
2 weeks. 1 weeks of research & synthesis, 1 week of designing.
Role on the Team
UX Designer and Researcher. All members of our team equally split up work in research and designing key screens, as well as taking lead on the project management.
Technology
Abbey is an iOS application, built using Sketch and prototyped with InVision.
We chose to develop our app in iOS because the iOS app store requires a verification process, which adds a level of safety to our app that we feel could make users feel more comfortable using this social app.
Initial Hypothesis
Our team's main hypothesis when creating this app was that women who travel solo want something to help them feel safer when they are in a new, unfamiliar place. We believe that women travelers choose to travel solo because they enjoy the freedom and the chance to experience new things, but there is still this worry of 'Is this place safe?' that lingers in her mind.
Therefore when we approached our research, we wanted to ask solo travelers what are their main concerns when they travel alone, and if they worry about safety at all - or is there something else that proves to be a bigger pain point?
Research
First, we ran a screener survey for users to interview.
The screener survey was six questions which asked people if they travel solo, how many times had they done so, and what websites and apps they had used when traveling. We received 48 responses and out of that group, about 80% of them met our requirements: a solo traveler who had made at least one trip on their own, and was thinking about traveling solo again.
With this population, we then conducted 11 user interviews. These interviews were all with women, so we also fleshed out our research with 5 additional user interviews with men.
In our user interviews, we asked users to describe their solo trips to us - how many times have they traveled solo, how much research did they do and what resources did they use, why they chose to travel solo, did they have any concerns about traveling solo and what they were, why did the chose to go to the places they did, what activities they liked to do, and other questions about what was their process for planning and enjoying their trips.
Thirdly in our research, we conducted a competitive feature analysis.
We looked at 20 different websites an apps that focused on either travel information, safety information, or were centered around women-created content. With this we were able to analyze the different features and approaches each site and app took to better understand what was out there already, what could be improved upon, and what could be combined for us to create Abbey.
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Major Insights
Through these interviews we learned three main things:
1. The reason users choose to travel solo is because it allows them higher flexibility to make their own schedule and do the experiences they want.
2. Even when traveling solo, users still want to be able to meet other travelers and locals in the area. Users value the information they gain from friends, locals, and other travelers to guide them on places they should go and things they should do more than any other resource, and users like meeting new people and sharing those experiences with them.
3. When asked about pain points of traveling solo, 10 out of the 11 women we interviewed mentioned personal safety as their biggest concern. They were worried about everything from being harassed for being a tourist to having to push off unwanted advances, and it was something that influenced their research, where they go and at what times of day. It would even influence where they would stay or what countries they would choose to travel to. In contrast, none of the men we interviewed stated safety as an issue, and when asked about safety specifically they translated this as making sure you don't lose your wallet or passport.
With this we finalized our persona - Jay. Jay is someone who often travels solo, but worries about finding people she can trust and approaching them so she can break out of her comfort zone. Therefore, how can we provide a way for Jay to connect with others she trusts when traveling alone?
Design Process
In order to create the best designs, we followed the following process:
1. Prioritize Features. Our team discussed the things the client wanted, what users stated they wanted, the competitive landscape and points of opportunity we identified through our research.
2. Run a Design Studio. A design studio is a team exercise that allows all members of the team to draw out their idea for a page or a flow, and compare it with the rest of the team, in order to collaborate and decide on how we want screens to look. By doing this activity together over the course of a day, we were able to come up with our first designs.
3. Create the screens and flows in a low fidelity of different tasks within the app. We also create the prototype at this stage so it can be tested.
4. Usability Tests. Usability testing allowed us to put our designs in front of potential users of the platform and help us see whether or not our designs worked, and how they could be improved upon. For this project, we ran three rounds of usability tests on 15 potential users to identify potential problems and fix them.
5. Edit screens to reflect the results of the usability testing, and then usability test again.
6. Create the final prototype backed by our usability tests.
Initial Design
Design Pivot
Our biggest pivot in our project came at about 2/3rds of the way through our sprint.
In our first design we tested an SOS button - something that users could use if they were in an extremely unsafe situation or when they felt very uncomfortable. This was central to our design, however we realized that instead of feeling safe, users we tested with this design felt more nervous when they saw the SOS button - why do they need something this severe?
We realized that our design wasn't something fun anymore - that in our need to focus in on safety, we forgot that more often than not things don't reach such a dire point. In reality, people just need a little bit of extra comfort, something they go out of their way to seek out through social connections. This is usually made when solo travelers seek out other solo travelers - something that was clear in our research but we accidentally overlooked in our first design.
Therefore at this point we redid our design in order to have a different approach - instead of focusing on safety and the worst case scenario, we instead focused on "How do our users create safe spaces for themselves by reaching out to others?"
This led us to our new design that didn't focus on SOS - but sending out a ping to meet other users in the Abbey app.
Final Design
Next Steps
For Abbey to become a real app, we determined a few things should happen in order to ensure it was successful on launch.
1. Partner with another company - AirBNB. Through our research we determined AirBNB to be a perfect partner to Abbey because through Abbey, users of AirBNB could connect with other travelers, allowing them to be seen as a local expert, and to be able to advertise their spaces. In return, Abbey users can have a credited, secure connection with someone already vetted by AirBNB to meet with and gain information from on things to do where ever they travel.
2. Have a clear, trustworthy verification process. We can verify users through social media or through them taking a photo of a government issued ID, which are common techniques for sites like AirBNB and CouchSurfing. We can also add in the verifications of apps like Bumble, which have users take a photo of themselves doing a specific pose to further verify them. This way, our users feel like our app is a safe experience and they don't have to worry about unwanted attention.
3. Ensure a $2.99 price point in the app store, with a potential free trial for the first month for new users. This way, we do not have to use ads or selling data to create a profit.
4. Find a way for this app to work without Internet or data. Throughout our research phase, we heard from users that they worried whether or not they could use this app without data or the Internet, as it would be used while traveling. Although we wanted to address this issue, we could not dedicate the time to research what would be the best solution for using the app without data or an Internet connection. It would be a great next step to see how we could address this issue.