Collaboration Feature
skyscanner mobile app (2023)
company
Skyscanner (not affiliated)
timeline
3 weeks in June 2023, part-time
role
Lead designer reporting to the course leaders Eduardo Huerta and Eduardo Aguirre acting as project managers
tools
Figma, Procreate, Illustrator, Photoshop, Midjourney, Chatgtp
Brief
————————————————————————————————
A challenge was presented to us individually at the Ironhack bootcamp in Barcelona, intended to simulate the work environment and processes prevalent in a large company, in collaboration with the product team:
“Skyscanner: planning a trip with your travel companions”
The objective was to seamlessly integrate the new feature into the Skyscanner mobile App without upsetting the established user experience.
The key research questions to guide this process included identifying Skyscanner’s value proposition, understanding if the new feature introduces a new value, getting to know the product's users, and discerning their objectives.
Research Objectives
————————————————————————————————
We used the brief as a starting point to direct the research, dissecting it into 3 main parts:
1. Observing the current user base of Skyscanner, how people plan a trip with it and what it’s appreciated for.
2. Learning the best practices and standards in existing collaborative travel planning tools and apps.
3. Discovering who could potentially benefit from the co-planning feature the most and the main pain points of travellers collaboratively planning trips.
Competitive Analysis
————————————————————————————————
Skyscanner is a popular online travel agency and metasearch engine. Although it allows people to find and compare flight, hotel, and car rental deals, most people use Skyscanner primarily for searching and comparing flight options. It’s recognised for its user-friendly interface and reliable search results.
During the competitive analysis we researched the current direct competitors and soon discovered some interesting, more extensive apps with higher price points that are marketed towards professional travel planners. Even-though hard to access, some of these incorporate messaging tools. The discovery of these apps made us zoom out of the travel-app sector and we realised that, from personal experience and talking to colleagues, messaging apps as are an important travel planning tool. We classified all considered apps into potential direct competitors and potential indirect competitors and saved them for future benchmarking purposes.
Target Users
————————————————————————————————
The target users were defined based on findings about the current user base, accounting for the median age and geographical distribution. Additionally, we added considerations about feasibility and focused on Europe to make it easier to conduct in-person interviews:
Travellers between 20-35 living in Europe who have planned a trip with at least 2 friends involving a flight within the last year.
Interviews
————————————————————————————————
Based on our findings from the competitive analysis, we lined out 3 main hypotheses to be enquired upon with in-person interviews:
1. Users mainly use messaging apps to plan group trips.
2. Users rely on voting throughout the planning process.
3. Users are annoyed by having to plan the trip using multiple apps.
We set our main goal to be about finding pain points throughout the planning process.
We found some main insights after interviewing 5 persons fitting the target in person:
How might we?
————————————————————————————————
How might we provide an enhanced experience for handling external references and voting, while introducing the most important features that group messaging apps provide?
Ideation + Benchmarking
————————————————————————————————
Following the benchmarking phase, we went ahead and further narrowed down on the functionality, considering an MVP approach and using the MOSCOW method. I went ahead and wrote down the most important use cases to consider:
1. Activating "Group Mode" on the trips page
2. Activating "Group Mode" on the trip page
3. Inviting new members
4. Reading up on the group chat
5. Adding a Suggestion
6. Voting on a Suggestion
7. Joining the group through a shared link
8. Sending a message in the group chat
Task Flows
————————————————————————————————
The entry points presented the biggest challenge on an information architecture level. To tackle it, we planned out task flows to distill the concerning parts of the existing app to its essentials and help implement the entry points elegantly, allowing us to restructure as little as possible of the existing app.
Hi-Fi prototype
————————————————————————————————
Usability Testing
————————————————————————————————
Usability testing Goals
1. Observe if the entry points for the feature are obvious enough
2. Uncover any interaction that generates confusion
3. Find out if the prototype corresponds to the target user’s mental model of existing messaging and travel focused apps
4. Find out if the proposed MVP fulfils the user’s minimum needs to be used as their primary group travel planning tool.
We carried out in-person user testing and defined the most important transversally observed findings:
Next steps
————————————————————————————————
1. Reiterate based on the usability testing insights
2. Fine tune the icons placement and sizing
3. Develop and launch the MVP with A/B testing
Key Learnings
————————————————————————————————
While we were overall happy with how the research was conducted, the hypotheses and the primary research results, there could have been more exploration done throughout the ideation phase. Additionally, there should have been a larger focus on the wire-framing phase to obtain a result that is visually fine-tuned.
Other Pages
————————————————————————————————
Collaboration Feature
skyscanner mobile app (2023)
company
Skyscanner (not affiliated)
timeline
3 weeks in June 2023, part-time
role
Lead designer reporting to the course leaders Eduardo Huerta and Eduardo Aguirre acting as project managers
tools
Figma, Procreate, Illustrator, Photoshop, Midjourney, Chatgtp
Brief
——————————————————————————————————
A challenge was presented to us individually at the Ironhack bootcamp in Barcelona, intended to simulate the work environment and processes prevalent in a large company, in collaboration with the product team:
“Skyscanner: planning a trip with your travel companions”
The objective was to seamlessly integrate the new feature into the Skyscanner mobile App without upsetting the established user experience.
The key research questions to guide this process included identifying Skyscanner’s value proposition, understanding if the new feature introduces a new value, getting to know the product's users, and discerning their objectives.
Research Objectives
——————————————————————————————————
We used the brief as a starting point to direct the research, dissecting it into 3 main parts:
1. Observing the current user base of Skyscanner, how people plan a trip with it and what it’s appreciated for.
2. Learning the best practices and standards in existing collaborative travel planning tools and apps.
3. Discovering who could potentially benefit from the co-planning feature the most and the main pain points of travellers collaboratively planning trips.
Competitive Analysis
——————————————————————————————————
Skyscanner is a popular online travel agency and metasearch engine. Although it allows people to find and compare flight, hotel, and car rental deals, most people use Skyscanner primarily for searching and comparing flight options. It’s recognised for its user-friendly interface and reliable search results.
During the competitive analysis we researched the current direct competitors and soon discovered some interesting, more extensive apps with higher price points that are marketed towards professional travel planners. Even-though hard to access, some of these incorporate messaging tools. The discovery of these apps made us zoom out of the travel-app sector and we realised that, from personal experience and talking to colleagues, messaging apps as are an important travel planning tool. We classified all considered apps into potential direct competitors and potential indirect competitors and saved them for future benchmarking purposes.
Target Users
——————————————————————————————————
The target users were defined based on findings about the current user base, accounting for the median age and geographical distribution. Additionally, we added considerations about feasibility and focused on Europe to make it easier to conduct in-person interviews:
Travellers between 20-35 living in Europe who have planned a trip with at least 2 friends involving a flight within the last year.
Interviews
——————————————————————————————————
Based on our findings from the secondary research, we lined out 3 main hypotheses to be enquired upon with in-person interviews:
1. Users mainly use messaging apps to plan group trips.
2. Users rely on voting throughout the planning process.
3. Users are annoyed by having to plan the trip using multiple apps.
We set our main goal to be about finding pain points throughout the planning process. I found some main insights after interviewing 5 persons fitting the target in person:
How might we?
——————————————————————————————————
Based on our findings from the secondary research, we lined out 3 main hypotheses to be enquired upon with in-person interviews:
Users mainly use messaging apps to plan group trips.
Users rely on voting throughout the planning process.
Users are annoyed by having to use multiple apps.
We set our main goal to be about finding pain points throughout the planning process. I found some main insights after interviewing 5 persons fitting the target in person:
Ideation + Benchmarking
——————————————————————————————————
Based on our findings from the secondary research, we lined out 3 main hypotheses to be enquired upon with in-person interviews:
1. Users mainly use messaging apps to plan group trips.
2. Users rely on voting throughout the planning process.
3. Users are annoyed by having to plan the trip using multiple apps.
We set our main goal to be about finding pain points throughout the planning process. I found some main insights after interviewing 5 persons fitting the target in person:
Task Flows
——————————————————————————————————
The entry points presented the biggest challenge on an information architecture level. To tackle it, we planned out task flows to distill the concerning parts of the existing app to its essentials and help implement the entry points elegantly, allowing us to restructure as little as possible of the existing app.
Hi-Fi prototype
——————————————————————————————————
Usability Testing
——————————————————————————————————
Usability testing Goals
1. Observe if the entry points for the feature are obvious enough
2. Uncover any interaction that generates confusion
3. Find out if the prototype corresponds to the target user’s mental model of existing messaging and travel focused apps
4. Find out if the proposed MVP fulfils the user’s minimum needs to be used as their primary group travel planning tool.
We carried out in-person user testing and defined the most important transversally observed findings:
Next steps
——————————————————————————————————
1. Reiterate based on the usability testing insights
2. Fine tune the icons placement and sizing
3. Develop and launch the MVP with A/B testing
Key Learnings
——————————————————————————————————
While we were overall happy with how the research was conducted, the hypotheses and the primary research results, there could have been more exploration done throughout the ideation phase. Additionally, there should have been a larger focus on the wire-framing phase to obtain a result that is visually fine-tuned.
Other Pages
——————————————————————————————————
Collaboration Feature
skyscanner mobile app (2023)
company
Skyscanner (not affiliated)
timeline
3 weeks in June 2023, part-time
role
Lead designer reporting to the course leaders Eduardo Huerta and Eduardo Aguirre acting as project managers
tools
Figma, Procreate, Illustrator, Photoshop, Midjourney, Chatgtp
Brief
————————————————————————————————
A challenge was presented to us individually at the Ironhack bootcamp in Barcelona, intended to simulate the work environment and processes prevalent in a large company, in collaboration with the product team:
“Skyscanner: planning a trip with your travel companions”
The objective was to seamlessly integrate the new feature into the Skyscanner mobile App without upsetting the established user experience.
The key research questions to guide this process included identifying Skyscanner’s value proposition, understanding if the new feature introduces a new value, getting to know the product's users, and discerning their objectives.
Research Objectives
————————————————————————————————
We used the brief as a starting point to direct the research, dissecting it into 3 main parts:
1. Observing the current user base of Skyscanner, how people plan a trip with it and what it’s appreciated for.
2. Learning the best practices and standards in existing collaborative travel planning tools and apps.
3. Discovering who could potentially benefit from the co-planning feature the most and the main pain points of travellers collaboratively planning trips.
Competitive Analysis
————————————————————————————————
Skyscanner is a popular online travel agency and metasearch engine. Although it allows people to find and compare flight, hotel, and car rental deals, most people use Skyscanner primarily for searching and comparing flight options. It’s recognised for its user-friendly interface and reliable search results.
During the competitive analysis we researched the current direct competitors and soon discovered some interesting, more extensive apps with higher price points that are marketed towards professional travel planners. Even-though hard to access, some of these incorporate messaging tools. The discovery of these apps made us zoom out of the travel-app sector and we realised that, from personal experience and talking to colleagues, messaging apps as are an important travel planning tool. We classified all considered apps into potential direct competitors and potential indirect competitors and saved them for future benchmarking purposes.
Target Users
————————————————————————————————
The target users were defined based on findings about the current user base, accounting for the median age and geographical distribution. Additionally, we added considerations about feasibility and focused on Europe to make it easier to conduct in-person interviews:
Travellers between 20-35 living in Europe who have planned a trip with at least 2 friends involving a flight within the last year.
Interviews
————————————————————————————————
Based on our findings from the competitive analysis, we lined out 3 main hypotheses to be enquired upon with in-person interviews:
1. Users mainly use messaging apps to plan group trips.
2. Users rely on voting throughout the planning process.
3. Users are annoyed by having to plan the trip using multiple apps.
We set our main goal to be about finding pain points throughout the planning process.
We found some main insights after interviewing 5 persons fitting the target in person:
How might we?
————————————————————————————————
How might we provide an enhanced experience for handling external references and voting, while introducing the most important features that group messaging apps provide?
Ideation + Benchmarking
————————————————————————————————
Following the benchmarking phase, we went ahead and further narrowed down on the functionality, considering an MVP approach and using the MOSCOW method. I went ahead and wrote down the most important use cases to consider:
1. Activating "Group Mode" on the trips page
2. Activating "Group Mode" on the trip page
3. Inviting new members
4. Reading up on the group chat
5. Adding a Suggestion
6. Voting on a Suggestion
7. Joining the group through a shared link
8. Sending a message in the group chat
Task Flows
————————————————————————————————
The entry points presented the biggest challenge on an information architecture level. To tackle it, we planned out task flows to distill the concerning parts of the existing app to its essentials and help implement the entry points elegantly, allowing us to restructure as little as possible of the existing app.
Hi-Fi prototype
————————————————————————————————
Usability Testing
————————————————————————————————
Usability testing Goals
1. Observe if the entry points for the feature are obvious enough
2. Uncover any interaction that generates confusion
3. Find out if the prototype corresponds to the target user’s mental model of existing messaging and travel focused apps
4. Find out if the proposed MVP fulfils the user’s minimum needs to be used as their primary group travel planning tool.
We carried out in-person user testing and defined the most important transversally observed findings:
Next steps
————————————————————————————————
1. Reiterate based on the usability testing insights
2. Fine tune the icons placement and sizing
3. Develop and launch the MVP with A/B testing
Key Learnings
————————————————————————————————
While we were overall happy with how the research was conducted, the hypotheses and the primary research results, there could have been more exploration done throughout the ideation phase. Additionally, there should have been a larger focus on the wire-framing phase to obtain a result that is visually fine-tuned.
Other Pages
————————————————————————————————