tourio
traditional, guided tours, done the modern way!
Contextual Enquiry
UX Design
Branding
identifying the opportunity
India averages to host about 10 million tourists each year. When they head out to explore heritage sites and monuments, they face several problems. These majorly include (but not limited to) - lack of information about the sites, hassle of hiring a tour guide who often come across to be misguiding and making them feel uncomfortable. These issues invite more challenges, such as language barrier and awkward accents, time constraints, and dependency on the tour guide. This leads to a disconnect from the actual facts about the site, overcharging for the tour, lack of awareness of amenities, and so on.
tl;dr: tourists visiting India often end up having an unpleasant experience! ☹
design process
the design process included understanding the target users, defining the problems they face based on the data gathered, ideating potential solutions, prototyping, testing the solutions with users, iterating based on feedback received
role
this was the capstone project for my Bachelor’s in Information Technology. I worked on this project as an Intern at Tourio, under the mentorship of Sidhant Gupta and Aditya Pandey.
skills applied
contextual user interviews, brainstorming and ideation, prototyping, graphic design, usability evaluations
what questions should we ask ourselves?
how can we help travellers passionate to travel and visit tourist sites? Is there a way to provide them with an immersive experience? Is it possible to make them feel confident and secure about their trip choices? Can we support them in feeling as if they’re in the moment of history, unraveling the stories and secrets surrounding the monuments, forts and other famous attractions?
UNDERSTAND THE USER
let's agree… we started with a hypothesis
looking back, when I talked about the opportunity, we did start with having an hypothesis. Up next, we will try to support our hypothesis with data collected from users. We collected both primary and secondary research data, and summarized the major pain points that were reported. Due to agreement constraints, I am restricted from sharing the references for the data collected. However, I will be sharing a high-level view of our findings.
time to introduce our fancy tourist, Joe!
the frustrating trip ☹
the current trip, shown through Joe's journey
welcome to India, Joe!
meet Joe Richard. Our tourist from the United States. This study will be narrated by keeping Joe, our persona, as a protagonist. As we move further, you'll learn more about Joe and his experiences in India.
how can we identify the problem statement?
well, we were able to understand that Joe is frustrated, so are most of the travelers. We also found out that our hypothesis was correct. Joe's feelings, actions and quotes corroborate the facts that we presented through our hypothesis and secondary research. To proceed to ideation, we came up with a problem statement. In order to comply with non-disclosure agreements, I am not able to share the business problem statement. However, I came up with an improved problem statement by following Google's UX Design Thinking course.
DEFINE THE PROBLEM
we conducted multiple rounds of brainstorming
we sat in a conference room. 4 days. loads of coffee. loads of snacks. stacks of post-its. we wrote our hearts out. essentially, we planned on using post-its to describe ideas for our app, and followed it by card sorting. due to the restrictions for sharing, I recreated the process using the same, or similar ideas at home.
the card sorting process
please hover on the cards to see the sorting! :)
storyboard
IDEATE THE SOLUTIONS
the storyboard shown here, is a mix of high-level and close-up illustrations. it shows Joe's journey when or app is introduced.
looking back at Joe's journey
if we were asked to fit those ideas in Joe's original journey, we can come up with opportunities for almost every task
developing a user flow for the app
the user flow is in conjunction with the flow designed keeping in mind both the business requirements and user pain-points that we were attempting to solve. it is a long flow, a link is embedded to scroll through it.
we created three fidelities of prototypes
there were three fidelities, paper prototypes, low-fi wireframes, and hi-fi wireframes. unfortunately, I do not have access to the paper prototypes. however, all of them are converted to low-fidelity and hi-fidelity. you can preview them here or click on the link to access all the prototypes.
low-fidelity wireframes
PROTOTYPING THE IDEAS
hi-fidelity prototypes
the hi-fidelity prototypes were created in the year 2018. once I moved on to work elsewhere, I looked back and tried to iterate based on some of the feedback we received through our contextual interviews back in 2018.
the login page
the login page introduces the users with an onboarding screen, explaining the application features.
the explore page
the explore page is also the homepage, or the dashboard, which helps users to browse different tourist sites, gives a summary of their description, and allows the user to search for a site, city, or state.
we also used the opportunity to display nearby sites and cities on the dashboard, thus providing curated information to each user.
the main tour
main tour is the page that opens up when the user is on the tourist site and plays the tour.
we used this opportunity to provide suggested paths to user, through a voice guided interface, so that they don't need to use their phones at all. as soon as a user reaches a guided checkpoint, voice tour starts to play.
the site page
site page provides detailed information about a tourist site, or city that the user opened by selection. if it is a city, it also shows included sites.
we used the opportunity to display site information and gallery so that the user feels confident about their trip and choice.
onboarding and login
illustrations describing the user tasks available in the app, as well as enabling easy login for the users
search and purchase
it's easy for a user to search, just use the search bar at the top. the user can open a site from the results and easily purchase the tour. there is also an option to preview to tour if a user is doubtful
explore and site page
explore harbors the features that allows user to browse curated content based on their location, trending tours, etc. when they open a site, they can go through pre-reads, gallery, etc before purchasing the tour.
the main tour
the app nudges the user when they reach a site. they don't have to keep the screen open, as there's a guided path, or they can choose their own path. the tour adjusts for the user.
we traveled to sites, we talked to tourists
yes, that's right, "road trippppp!". we traveled in cars, trains, planes. our goal was to observe the tourists. and then observe them while using Tourio. in return, we offered them free hotel stays with our partner hotels. it worked. it really works. we were able to gather some eye-opening feedback. lucky enough, we didn't have a lot of usability issues.
TESTING AND REVISIONS
tourists at the "sunrise point" in rishikesh, india. we spoke to people at random and handed them the devices and headphones to test our mvp and provide feedback.
some insightful feedback
honestly, on spot feedback was spot on. we came back home, introspected. thankfully, the MVP looked promising to launch. and we did it. we launched. 12 indian sites across five states. recognized by multiple state tourism boards, which used our platform to host autonomous guided tours. however, there was a need to revise the app based on the feedback. unfortunately, due to my limited time at Tourio, the revisions could not see light of day. however, a blessing in disguise, I was onboarded again during the pandemic. to make those revisions.
Tourio being my first project that introduced me to UXD, there are quite a number of things that i take away from here.
balancing between business goals and user goals
realizing the importance of contextual interviews
Not everything is about the looks
Coming into the internship I thought that it is all about the user journey, but throughout my journey with Tourio, I realized that even though the work is user-centered, it is more about how and where our business ideas have opportunities to solve a problem for the users.
While I think of myself as meticulous in observational skills which makes me understand issues well, at Tourio, I realised the criticality of directly talking to potential users in order to understand their thoughts and pain-points.
I used to give a lot of thought to visual details, without considering the user perspective much, before I started my journey with an actual project like Tourio. Here, I realized how the overall UX defines the visual design and not just the glitz and colors.
REFLECTION