breadcrumb (UX)
The Brief
Come up with an idea for a native app that would be the digital companion piece to our Lonely Planet books, apps and website. It needs to fit nicely into our eco-system (book, apps and website) and ideally we want it to be used pre, during and post travel. This app has to help travelers find accommodation, restaurants, local sites etc., as well as allow users to share their experiences with friends and fellow travelers. We are open to seeing any other ideas you would like to bring to the table.
The challenge
After our discussion, we understood that what we needed was a new digital strategy to capture the younger generation, called Generation Z. Their travel habits have changed compared to the Millenials so we need to find a product that fits their needs in order to get them to use our services.
Mapping the echo system
In order to understand how our product would fit in the Lonely Planet Family. We decided to map out the ecosystem where we listed all the existing products for seeing the blind spots and finding the area of opportunities. To do so, we divided them into 3 categories: Pre, During and Post travel.
As you can see, a lot of LP products are commonly used before the trip for the researching and planning parts or during the trip for the experience because our past products are optimized for helping users to find information.
However, we saw an area of opportunity in the Post-travel phase, there are currently only two products (Forum and Trips) which are mainly used to share their experience and recommendations. That’s why we planned our service that has a strength in the Sharing part. Our app can cover not only just post-travel but also pre and during part too.
Users interviews
We conducted user interviews to better understand our target audience. We had 22 conversations with people from the age of 17 to 28, not only genZ backpackers but also from flatpackers to Millenials.
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Based on our research we found out Gen-Z backpackers love to share their own experiences with others, discover unique places and live authentic experiences. They don’t trust online reviews anymore, they are more critical and cynical. From this statement, we think it might be an excellent chance for us if we have a strategy for saving their own travel freely and sharing their journey to others easily.
Personas
Personas are based on real data and users, gathered through research, interviews, and observation. Personas helped our team to be on the same page about our users throughout the application design processes. We have 3 personas for Breadcrumbs:
Marienne, who is a 21-year-old GenZ backpacker. She is our scrapbooker who likes to find and save new experiences during her travel and everyday life. She likes to remember the places she visited so she can remember the next time she wants to go. She is our main persona.
Then there is Elizabeth, the Altruist who is 23 year old. She is from New York. She does not travel a lot but she has a lot of friends who go to her for recommendations of go-to places in New York. She has 2000+ followers on Instagram. She likes to share a bunch of cool places to her friends but wishes there was an app that lets her share personalized recommendations easily.
And then we have Mark, the Lurker as we call him. He is a 29-year-old who works as a software engineer in Berlin. He takes short trips and is actively looking for recommendations from his friends because he generally doesn’t have the time to research on a place before he goes. He is quite spontaneous.
Wireframes
Keeping all these things in mind, we started making the sketches for the layout of our app. We created the sketches of the idea we were having in their mind and after discussing all the ideas and layouts from the sketches, we created our first version of low fidelity wireframes.
