MOGO - Modification/Mobility on the Go
A tool that helps adjust travel plans to alleviate people’s travel stress and help travelers obtain better travel experience
Timeline: Jan 2019 - March 2019
Team : Jessica Zhu, Yuqi Feng
Project Type: Human Computer Interaction class project
My Role: UX Researcher
Skills: Ideation, User Research, Sketching, Storyboard, Sitemap, Paper Prototyping, Wizard of Oz Prototyping, Usability Inspection, Usability Testing
PROBLEM SPACE
For many people, leisure travel is an indispensable routine that helps them escape from a busy schedule and a way to reward themselves after working hard. It is supposed to refresh and revitalize the individual’s body and soul. However, almost every individual experiences some level of travel stress during their planned trip, such as failing to deal with unexpected situations. Providing individuals with suitable recommendations presents to be another challenge.
Leisure Travel
Unexpected Situation
Travel Stress
Want Adjustment
Not Personalized
More Stress
Problem Space
SOLUTION
We are designing a smartwatch and mobile application, MOGO - Modification/Mobility on the go, that learns an individual's personal preference along the way to provide helpful travel tips and replan individual’s trips whenever needed. How to edit or adjust travel plans accordingly to alleviate people’s travel stress and help travelers obtain better travel experience is worthy of consideration.
IDEATION
During this stage, we began thinking about how to plan effective design research to inform our design process. We generated 10 ideas related to each of the following aspects of our project proposal: Forms, Data, Tasks, Features and Social Interactions.
Project Ideation
(Defining possible forms, tasks, features and social interactions)
DESIGN RESEARCH
We decide to utilize both questionnaire-based surveys and semi-structured interviews to get a better understanding of how people currently performing in their real travels and what problems they commonly encounter during their trip.
Do you wish for a hassle free and personalized travel experience?
Hi! We are looking for people to participate in travel research survey. We are trying to understand the problems people usually face during their travel.
We appreciate your responses, and your contact information will not be published.
https://goo.gl/forms/I6LocabxY89XCs0u1
- Team MOGO
Research Survey
RESEARCH
User Survey
As we needed a large amount of data to support our design, we choose survey as our tool to reach a large number of people within a short time. The survey helped us get an overall understanding of travelers' habits and their concerns. We also used the survey to identify potential participants for our interviews.
User Interview
For diversity purpose, we selected interviewees from our survey pool by their ages, employment, and travel frequency. To gain insight into the general condition of the tourist industry and how to help travelers resolve problems during the trip, we also conduct an interview with a travel agent.
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College Student
Young (< 30) Unemployed
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Travel Agent
Old(>55)
Self-Employed
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Manager
Middle-Aged(30-55)
Employed
Interview Participants
DESIGN RESEARCH REVIEW
Themes
During this stage, we reflected on what we observed and learned in your design research, organizing observations around themes to tasks to help inform your design. We noticed that people do not know how to deal with unexpected situations which require experience, which increases their trip planning load. Also, People find it difficult to get the updated and latest information online, which leads to bad time management and loss of resources
Prioritize Safety
High Cost for Adjustments
Personalized Information
Themes identified in the Design Research
User Tasks
Our design re-generates a new itinerary in terms of people’s priority if something unanticipated happens and shortens people’s travel time severely. We also saw an opportunity to develop a feedback system for travelers to report their opinions after they visit certain places. Doing so helps us keep track of people’s travel histories so that we can improve the travelers' performance, such as eliminating locations people do not want to visit again.
Building on what we learned in your design research, we designed six tasks that we believe are integral to our overall design goal. Our six tasks span a wide range of functionality and difficulty, from easy to hard tasks.
Avoid dangerous areas during the trip
Generate alternative plan
Receive suggestions for relative activities
Learn personal preference
Provide travel tips for the day
Get updated info about destination
Tasks Identified
SKETCHING
We brainstormed and sketched three very different initial designs for MOGO's interface.
Technology in Use
Wearable Smartwatch
The design focuses on guarding an individual’s health and safety while providing personalized trips by measuring or recording an individual’s physical or emotional activities.
Mobile App
The design focuses on group traveling (2+ travelers). Mobile App gives users easier access and convenience. The App shows detailed information of the alternative plan generated.
Car Voice Interface
The design assumes that the user has a car for traveling and that the car has a display screen with a voice interface. The design is embedded with the voice system for the driver’s safety.
STORYBOARDING
From our design sketches, we selected one design that we would refine and two tasks that will be the focus of your design refinement. We then create a storyboard of each task for our selected design. Our group choose to refine the Wearable Smartwatch design. The two tasks that we would like to focus on are “Avoid danger zone” and “Learning personal preference and providing better recommendation next time”.
Task 1 Avoid danger zone
Task 2 Learning personal preference and providing a better recommendation
Mobile
Smart Watch
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Car Display
PAPER PROTOTYPE
We develop a paper prototype for our design which conveys all critical aspects of your design, including support for testing our two primary tasks. This prototype is informed by your prior sketching and storyboarding. But it also contains more details than our prior exploratory designs.
Initial Paper Prototype
Heuristics Evaluation
Final Sitemap
Digital Mockups
We created our digital mockup based on your final paper prototype. The mockup effectively communicates our design in a manner appropriate for our final website. Digital mockup to includes key frames that illustrate our design and conveys all critical aspects of our design.
Digital Mockup for Task 1: Generating an alternative plan due to the unexpected closure of a location
The smartwatch vibrates to alert the user that the planned “Seattle Art Museum” is closed unexpectedly. When the user checks smartphones for more details, he/she can find alternatives MOGO provides to replace the original plan. The user can choose to see details if he/she wants.
Digital Mockup for Task 2: Filling out the feedback and Getting better recommendation during the trip
The smartwatch vibrates around the time when the user waits for the dinner, and it asks the user to fill out the feedback for the Taylor Shellfish Restaurant MOGO recommends earlier. The user taps the emoji to record his/her feeling and the feedback enables MOGO to learn more about the user’s preference.
Digital Mockup for App logo page and Trips Page
App Logo Page
App Trips Page
KEY LEARNINGS AND FUTURE WORK
Throughout the process of this projects, I learned many new design terminologies like contrast, rule of thirds and design methods like sketching, storyboarding, usability testing, etc. Along the way, I also learned that we as designers have to be ready to abandon some of our design ideas, and we should be quickly able to move to creating new ideas. That's where iteration plays a key role. One major takeaway also was that there is no "average user".
In the future, we are planning to create a implementation strategy and bring our work to live.