Timeline
- April - May 2022 (5 weeks)
My role
- Student project for Memorisely’s UX/UI design bootcamp
📄 Context
As our world grows more connected with advancements in technology, alongside global events like covid and the rise in working remotely - people are burning out and are looking for ways to recharge. With Unplugged, you can book a remote cabin and disconnect from the digital world for the weekend and rest.
🤜🏼🤛🏼 Challenge(s)
When searching for a cabin, users currently filter through a series of drop downs to find a cabin. It's not obvious for users which months are available and ideally they'd like more flexibility when searching and booking a cabin. From a business perspective, making it easier for users to search and book a cabin would increase the quantity of bookings. From a user perspective, having the flexibility to search and filter for cabins more easily would increase their rate of booking/rebooking an experience.
💡 Design solution
Usability Review
To help me better understand the product, I conducted a usability to identify pain points and wow moments in the existing experience
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🔑 Insights
- There weren’t that many cabins that were being offered by Unplugged at this time, and many of those cabins had very limited availability. Going through the flow to find out that the cabin you wanted had been booked felt to me like a huge pain point.
- The branding for Unplugged throughout emphasized the images. And the images were really beautiful. I felt inspired and wanted to continue to evoke the feelings in any new design changes.
- The layout of images of multiple cabins were found together, almost looking as if multiple separate locations were a single cabin. I felt the effect on a customer having full information about the cabin that they would be booking was a really important consideration, so I wanted to brainstorm ways that I could improve the clarity of the individual cabin and their unique amenities without losing the inspiring qualities of the grouped nature imagery.
Information Architecture
Following the usability review, I mapped the information architecture of the product experience. I was primarily looking for places in the architecture that we served opportunity to immerse the customer in a cabin they were interested in, or be explicit about many options of independent cabins in case they wanted to cast a wide net.
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🔑 Insights
- Unplugged is located in London, and I wanted to keep the “North of London” and “South of London” designations that had pre-existed in the design, as I felt this could help immediately bring the user closer to their dream cabin.
- A consideration I had throughout the information architecture was the layout of information, but mentally, I was considering the flow of the user as well, as they continued to narrow down their search and find a cabin. I wanted to start at the most broad possible cabins and then quickly narrow it down based on the customer, and make it feel that the UI acted almost like an agent for the client.
- Without losing the power of the imagery, I wanted to make sure that the name of each cabin were mentioned alongside the image in hopes that it would help customers understand what cabins they loved and wanted to explore deeper about, their amenities and unique qualities.
Customer Journey Map
The customer journey mapping helped me identify the pain points at each touchpoint of the experience.
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🔑 Insights
- Going to a cabin for a weekend had concerns in the case of any serious emergency. In the case that there was power outage, severe weather conditions, or the health of a guest, full information is very important in that context about the cabin, cabin location, and surrounding areas.
- As a user, I want to have all of my bookkeeping steps out of the way, including paying the full amount required to stay before I disconnect, so I know that everything is in order when I am without my phone. I want to know all of the details about my cabin on a physical material that can be held to tell me where I can find the firewood, the code to the backdoor, or the padlock combination to the wine cooler so that I can navigate without having to consult with my technology at all.
Ideation
To avoid following the first idea, I conducted a series of ideation techniques. This allowed me to consider an array of solutions.
User Flows
Following Ideation I created user flows of the existing experience and improved the flow based on the idea that fit with business and user goals
UI Styles
The lo fi prototype helped me recognize frustrations with the experience that I improved at the hi fi stage. To create the high fidelity prototype I inspected the products style and followed the 8pt rule to effectively and easily create a prototype that was consistent with the product styling. Before creating the prototype I defined styles and components to easily and quickly help me design consistently
Prototype
Key Takeaways
- I’d ask for feedback earlier - In a few instances, particularly on a screen where the user would select a number of filters to populate results for cabins. I found a lot of indecision, and overall, doubt about my design. I think one way to battle doubt and indecision is to ask for feedback, and ask for directed feedback at the parts that you are not sure about. I think we often think as designers we want to have answers and problem solve with ourselves, and while this is true, no designer designs alone and we should bounce ideas off the humans around us and elevate across individuals what doesn’t and does resonate in design.
- I’d find better ways to listen - I felt that I could have learned more and learned more quickly if I had searched online for reviews about cabins, and I’d like to have really explored the reviews of people that had stayed in cabins, and what pain points, or “wow” moments that they had in their experience. I would have leaned not on my own understanding of the context, but would have really listened better to guests and their reviews. As well as have highlighted reviews and past experiences more throughout the site.
- I’d get in touch - if I were to design this again, I would take more time to investigate what it felt like to disconnect from my own electronics in my own life and reflect on that feeling. It is easy to design in a bubble hoping that your designs display realistic empathy for the user experience as they book and stay in a cabin. I believe that empathy can be taken to the next level by really getting into their shoes. I might turn off my phone even at a coffee shop while I worked otherwise, and reflect on that experience.
more work →
