BACKGROUND
Wakanow is Africa's leading travel tech company and the curator of the best travel experiences. They offer travelers the cheapest available fares for flights, hotel reservations, airport pickups, visa assistance, vacation packages and many other travel services from a broad selection of partners.
Wakanow travel app allows travelers to search and select trips from all over the world with convenient filtering features and maps.
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ABOUT THE PROJECT
In 2018, I began learning UI/UX design and was fortunate to secure a Senior Graphic Designer position at Wakanow. Upon joining the team, I discovered that most of the design team had resigned. I was issued an iMac and part of what was saved by the previous user was his mockups for the Wakanow responsive web design. I came to my eureka moment as I stumbled upon the discovery. Coming to this realization, I became inspired to embark on what became a four-month journey to achieve the ultimate goal.
This opportunity allowed me to immerse myself in UX research and design, dedicating extensive time to Sketch and Principle. I enthusiastically explored wireframe concepts albeit sometimes overwhelming those around me with my notebook full of rough sketches.
GOALS
Initially, it started as desk research just to gain insight into the product and the processes but as time when on I immersed myself in it. I saw a need for a heuristic evaluation of the product. The goal of this project was to practice and learn more about UX processes starting from research and going through all other stages like brainstorming, prototyping, ideating, testing with users, etc. It was an individual project that I did. I used the Double Diamond design process to ensure that I maintain a user-centric approach in everything I did.
ROLES
This is a solo project where I assumed the following roles:
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Interaction Designer
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User Experience (UX) Designer
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User Interface (UI) Designer
DELIVERABLES
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Interaction Design:
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High-fidelity interactive mobile prototypes of 3 key interaction sequences
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UX & UI Design:
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High-fi mockups
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Style guide & UI components
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Low-fidelity wireframes
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Usability test findings
​SPECIFICATIONS
Duration:
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12 weeks
MY PROCESS
Discover:
I started by preparing some questions related to this topic for the interview.
I used the unstructured interview approach to find out more about travelers’ preferences, motivations, and expectations.
There are some questions that I asked during the interview:
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How often do you travel?
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Do you plan a trip beforehand?
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Where do you look for the information to plan the trip?
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What motivates you to visit certain places?
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What you prefer to do during the trip?
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Did it match your expectations?
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Define:
During interviews I determinate 3 types of travelers:
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Single travelers
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Travelers with kids
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Couples
For this project, I’m going to focus on couples and single travelers simply because I’ve interviewed these types more them travelers with kids.
Couples and single travelers can be divided into two groups:
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People that plan their trip ahead
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Spontaneous travelers that like to discover on the go
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Develop:
Thanks to the interviews, I’ve found the same pain-points that both adventurers and planners travelers experience:
1. Finding alternative information to create a unique experience.
2. Keeping all this information organized on one platform.
3. Find recommended routes and have the ability to customize them.
I used the mind map as an easy way to organize all data, create a visual structure, and brainstorm the best possible solution to solve my user pain-points.
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Deliver:
I started with the paper sketches, and after a couple of tests, I jumped into mid-fidelity. Working on mid-fidelity wireframes, I tried to make several variations of the article page to test which one has a better response.
From my research, I knew that users were looking for interesting content with useful travel tips, so I devote some time to work on the page and text layout. Because I used the travel blog articles with a lot of information my goal was to have:
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a clear information hierarchy
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provide the most relevant content first
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show more detail upon request
Information Architecture
The goal of Information Architecture is to organize and sort information hierarchically, so users can successfully experience and interact with the app or website. The flow helped me to understand how users might interact with the app and keep a clear picture of the steps they need to take to get to the final goal.
Sketches
Sketching the screens was an essential step in the design process that allowed me to create a visual representation of the app's structure, layout, and functionality before moving ahead with the high-fidelity screens.