Creating a native mobile app to allow culturally conscious travelers to find 'off the beaten path' eateries that aren't overcrowded with tourists.
SHORT LIST
Role
team
tools
timeline
Product Designer
Preksha Jain
Rahim Shabazz
Yosuke Tohari
Joyce Zhou
Figma
Adobe Suite
Zeplin
2 Week Sprint – July 2022
Problem Space
Easing the pre-travel research process
We tasked ourselves with easing the frustrations of travelers conducting research before traveling to a new place. We identified frustrations from our own lives regarding crowdsourced tools like Google or Yelp such as lack of verified reviews and an abundance of options to view and choose from. To ensure we had a focused approach for this two week sprint, we honed in on finding eateries that aren't overcrowded with tourists.
Design Challenge
Anticipating the needs of a traveler visiting a new destination
Before conducting any research, we attempted to put ourselves in the shoes of those we were trying to design for and assumed that:
- Travelers want to make conscious choices when visiting a new place, and often do not have the resources or knowledge to do so
- The best and most authentic dining spots to go to are difficult to find, and tourist may not want to be led by or pay for a guide
- Visitors want reputable suggestions for where to eat
- Conscious travelers want a list of culturally authentic food experiences, curated by reputable sources
This helped us frame our initial design challenge to be:
How might we help conscious travelers find culturally authentic food experiences while helping them respectfully participate in local customs?
Proposed Product Partner
A symbiotic pairing with Airbnb
To fast-track our visibility, we began thinking of viable product partners to get us up and running. After considering several travel-forward companies, we landed on Airbnb. Their mission is to ‘help create a world where travelers can belong anywhere allowing them to experience living in a place, rather than just traveling to it.’ This felt directly in line with what we wanted our product to be, and with Airbnb’s recent emphasis on ‘experiences,’ we felt they were the perfect match.
Short List – A Curated Food Travel Guide
Find unforgettable dining experiences recommended by local experts
This app would alleviate stress and research time for travelers by ensuring a short list of verified eateries suggested by a team of resident connoisseurs.
User Interviews
Meeting our ideal users where they are
We sent out a screener survey to find users who travel, conduct research before going, and prioritize food experiences. This survey provided us with five optimal interviewees: Tatsuro, Chloe, Richard, Teresa, and Ryan. We conducted 20 minute interviews with each of them asking questions about their experiences traveling and eating, with a special focus on cultural considerations and the question of ‘what makes something authentic.’
Local Recs
We were able to gain these insights from these interviews:
Customs
Tourism
Tourists trust that locals know their area best
Travelers care about being respectful in a new environment
'Off the beaten path' spots for food and drink are often preferred over tourist crowded destinations
Research
Travelers are apprehensive to take crowdsourced recommendations like Yelp and Google at face value
Culture
When storytelling is part of the serving of food, it builds ones' appreciation of what they are eating
Cost
Value is calculated in not just cost, but in quality of experience
PERSONA
Creating a true north for our design process
We found that our research validated our initial thoughts that conscious travelers desire a curated list of culturally authentic food experiences, recommended by reputable sources.
To help us guide our design process and keep us as user-focused as possible, we created our persona, Priscilla. She has all the goals, needs, and frustrations of our ideal user and with her in mind, we can create an empathetically designed product.
Goals
Needs
Frustrations
- Try new places
- Respect local customs
- Authentic dining experiences
- Trusted recommendations
- Customs ettiquite list
- Holistic experiences
- Cannot find consistent trusted reviews or recommendations
- Feeling embarrassed or singled out when culturally misinformed
- Often finds that recommended spots end in being underwhelmed
Turning Insights Into Features
Prioritizing our research findings to create our minimum viable product
Given that this is a two-week sprint, we could not bring in every feature we would have liked to, but we wanted to make sure our product was still usable, and addressing the main frustrations we were solving for.
Since we learned travelers are apprehensive to take crowdsourced recommendations like Yelp and Google at face value, we wanted all of Short List’s curated recommendations to come from vetted experts. Additionally, since tourists trust that locals know their area best, we wanted all of our recommendations to come local experts. Since our culturally conscious users also care about being respectful in a new environment but also want to avoid tourist crowds as much as possible, we will offer etiquette tips, and a tourist presence meter to help set users expectations and assist them in navigating the environment.
Prototype Walkthrough
Putting on Priscilla's traveling shoes
For a walkthrough of the product, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of our persona Priscilla who is planning for her Kyoto Airbnb stay. A user like Priscilla would step through these four tasks:
- Sign in with Airbnb
- Browse the Short List
- Learn more about a specific dining experience
- Meet the team of local experts
APP MAP
How a user flows through our MVP
Design System
Organizing our designs
I got to lean on my previous expertise in branding and creative direction and had fun with the challenge of creating a product that fits in with Airbnb but stands on its own two feet. We made the decision to have an overall color guide, but thought it would be impactful to have each location have their unique colorways.
A curated guide for the food less traveled by
The road to usable high fidelity
Tracking back to earlier in our design process, we brought in 5 testers to see how intuitive our mid-fi prototype was, and got promising results. These mid-fi prototypes allowed our users to accomplish our four MVP tasks of:
Usability Testing
- Signing in with Airbnb
- Browsing the Short List
- Learning more about a specific dining experience
- Meeting the team of local experts
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Signing in with Airbnb
Browsing the Short List
Learning more about a specific dining experience
Meeting the team of local experts
Design Feedback
Helpful insights from usability testing
We ended up with an overall 80% task completion rate on our mid-fi prototype, with 100% success on the sign in task, and 60% success rate finding the experts page. We found that users would like to see menus, and images of the food. Additionally, we learned that users expect the ‘experts’ page to be in some primary navigation instead of being stowed away in a hamburger menu.
Final Results
Improvements led to validating testing results
We took the slight usability issues discovered in our first round of testing into account to flow our final high fidelity prototypes and saw improved results in our second and final round of testing.
Our average task completion success rate grew by 5% which validated our design changes.
Thinking Beyond the design sprint
Planning next actions and an implementation plan
In the next sprint, we aim to add more core features we had to deprioritize for the minimum viable product such as the map view of the eatieries. Additionally, we will want to consider other platform builds to allow for various device experiences.
Looking ahead to release and implementation, we need to recruit more Airbnb host experts to cover more locations, and upon launch we will follow Google’s HEART metrics, a user-driven metric chart of Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success to help us chart how well our product is being received.
