challenge

What Other Potential Does Navigation Have? It Brings Your Traveling Surprises 

Why this topic?

I was interested in the transportation design, then I started to think about the origin of transportation: the way from A to B. No matter which method you take, one of those things you must do is the navigation. So I started the research from a broader topic, the navigation, and ended up a design opportunity, bringing in surprises into traveling.

CLIENT & ACADEMIC

+ Research method

+ Human Computing Interaction

+ Self-oriented project

MY ROLE

+ Researcher

+ Designer

+ Explorer

METHOD & TOOL

+ Research Method: Semi-structured interview, prototyping, usability test (convenience sampling)

+ Data Analysis: Coding

+ Design tools: Figma

Research OPPORTUNITY

Design for Chinese GenZ to Make Their Travel More of "On the Road"

To understand the navigation thoroughly, I compared the navigation habits of 3 generations (how they find their ways from point A to B) in a Chinese family (N=3).

I found that all 3 generations have a tendency to navigate by proxy in unfamiliar locations, especially in traveling scenarios. But the youngest generation, GenZ, compared with the other two elderly generations, are not only taking advantage of the efficiency of information technology, but also using their own sense of exploring the reality. People can get less fun if caring only about "how to get there", however, the GenZ shows a potential to enjoy the fun of 'On The Road' in traveling.

I decided to dig in this phenomenon I found from this first round of interview:

  • GenZ in China
  • Traveling scenario
  • They way one get fun
  • And the navigation in travel
SECONDARY RESEARCH

Target User Group: Chinese GenZ in Tier 3 and 4 Cities.

I went through a Popular Media Scan (101 Design Methods, P24) to have a look at what is happening and emerging in a broader topic: Chinese GenZ & traveling. By going through top Google Search results, TikTok, Weibo, RED, Mafengwo, WeChat Article... I also went through some publicly available data and combined the information together with card sorting.

General understanding of Chinese GenZ's traveling: (can be supplement to the following interview data)

  • Special characteristic: Chinese GenZ are inhabitant of internet. More GenZs compared with other generations prefer to visit a city multiple times, or travel alone.
  • Altitude: Values a travel experience by enjoyment, creativity, and depth; Willing to spend money for good stuffs and meanwhile valuing service quality.
  • Way of travel: Most of GenZ prefer self-guided travel.
  • Location: Prefer to travel abroad (short trips to Asian countries) and leisure trips (nearby cities).
  • Duration: Preferred travel duration is roughly 5-7 days.

Market opportunity: "what is MY best choice?"

Travel decisions are usually made based on prevalent information from social networks. However, it seems a paradox that Chinese GenZ in tier 3 and 4 cities also would like to express their unique personalities through consumption decisions. I understand it as a tension that they would like to choose the best solution to their own egos.

Target User Group

While people in tier 1 cities are still the main consumers, people in 3 and 4 tier cities are getting more and more enthusiastic on traveling. The higher proportion of disposable income in tier 3 and 4 cities compared with tier 1 cities is supporting GenZ in tier 3 and 4 cities to "see the world".

Way to Travel

Chinese GenZ prefer self-guided travel more than ever, plus, GenZ is moving towards newer lifestyles driven by new media. 

Consumer Behavior

Chinese GenZ have been baptized by consumerism and value personalized self-expression through consumption. However, Chinese GenZ make rational consumer decisions because they are used to gathering and comparing information from the Internet. Chinese GenZ who love social networks have greater willingness and ability to consume.

Socializing

The self-guided travel of Chinese GenZ has become more of a copy & paste activity, with people accepting the recommendation from online celebrities and taking that into consumer actions. Chinese GenZ also love sharing their won lives on the social network to express themselves.

I also established the key variable table of Chinese GenZ by qualitatively analyzing the popular media scan data. And for each key variable, there are several typical descriptions that dividing each variable into detailed classes. This table working as a criteria will help me establish the persona:

Primary RESEARCH

Towards the User Group: What are Typical User's Personalities? What are the Problems Target Users are Facing?

To further understand the users, I collected qualitative data and analyzed with coding. 12 User interviews were conducted, and participants were selected based on the following criteria: 1) Chinese GenZ, 2) live in tier 3 and 4 cities, 3) have been through at least 1 self-guided travel.

After coding the user data, I enriched the key variable table, and statistically evaluated each class in variables by counting the number of time they appeared in the user data.

To figure out the user pattern (persona), I selected reasonable classes of each variable. However, the persona is not settled yet, I still need the information of pain points (problems) to elaborate usable personas. Classes of high scores were covered as much as possible, while considering the realistic of users, lower-scored classes were also covered occasionally case by case.

To understand the pain points our users are facing, I used thematic coding to understand the interview data: tagging -> categorizing tags -> finding out patterns of tags. 

Pain points: 

  • Improvising trip planning: I have two hours before the next activity as planned, what can I do within two hours?
  • Seek for surprises: what can I do to improve the possibility of meeting surprises in travel? 
  • About "me": current AI recommendations can diminish my certainty of "I AM CHOOSING".

Then general pain points are adapted to different user patterns to generate final personas:

Primary RESEARCH

Expert Interview: What Do Expert Users Do to Bridge the Gap?

Recalling back the research results:

  • Market opportunity: What is MY best choice? -> I would like to choose the best option that fits my identity.
  • Pain points: 1) Improvising trip planning, 2) Seek for surprises, 3) "I AM CHOOSING"

It's not hard to understand the market opportunity and pain point one and three, and draft a design direction base on the data. But I found it difficult to understand how surprises come and how might we help to improve the possibilities. So I conducted an expert interview to find some inspirations from how expert user do, emphasizing the pain point 2, but also learning about other points. I conducted an expert interview (N=1). The participant is a travel enthusiast who have been to 16 countries.

The key takeaways are:

"Surprise" means:

1) The real scenery is better than photos seen on social media before. 
2) User encounters something that has seen online before. 
3) A more experienced friend guides the user to travel, the user don't have to know too much ahead about the trip, neither having to take too much factors into consideration. But still, flexibility is important.

Improvising decision rules:

1) No detours. 
2) Pass by the sight or event before checking out information online. 
3) Judge the information by how real it is (e.g. a real user's post). 
4) Would like to change plans flexibly. 
5) Usually, improvised decisions are taking a walk and shopping.

Social network usage:

Sharing posts of the sight is for: 
1) engaging old friends who are not traveling together, and 
2) keeping a memory in a way that easy to manage. It's important to keep them clean and beautiful. 
3) Would like to record surprises found in a trip.

Altitude on AI recommendation:

1) Useful for aimless browsing (killing time). 
2) Not useful when having a vague target, or having finished purchasing, since AI alway recommends same items instead of a wider browsing, like items that are not directly related but in a same category.

design articulation

Travel Options based on Location: What are My Choices to Travel Here and Now?

To cover the market opportunity and three pain points, the design solution can be: providing choices that match your situation. The choices can be user-generated by other travelers who found surprising local items before. How this design direction solves the problem:

  • Market opportunity "What is MY best choice?": Recommendations are based on location, so recommendations would be personalized for any travelers as long as they choose a direction or route with their own ideas. Expression of egos can already be done with most of the social networks, so I decided not to include in-APP social networking functions.
  • Pain point 1: Improvising trip planning: Taking too many factors into consideration can diminish surprises in a trip. So let's make the algorithm assist: time limit, transportation distance, weather, open and close time of the sight...
  • Pain point 2: Seek for surprises: If I understand the culture seeker as "I want to know more about the local along side my footprint", providing information would be enough. Content should come from travelers, which means travelers are helping each other to know the local better.
  • Pain point 3: "I AM CHOOSING": Providing choices instead of providing decisions.
self-reflection

How Might I Do Better?

· Persona

The personas above are only approximations that are close to real users as possible because of small sample size, but they are still my best guesses due to resource and time constraints.

If I have colleagues working on marketing research and data science, I'd like to communicate with them and work together to build a set of personas that's more accurate. In this way, the persona will reflect more authentic information generated by users, and will help our design hit the business target that exactly from the real world. The steps would be:

  • Market opportunity: Identify an unsaturated market that our company could handle. Get a blurry sense of the product we are going to design by setting up a general user pool with a distinct business target.
  • Competitive products: What are the services and needs they already cover?
  • Collect data from real users: (The same)
  • Data analysis: (The same)
  • Presentation: (The same) May have some quotes.
  • Validation: Find out actual users who match the values and core needs of each type of persona, or design experts, and ask them what they think about our result. The method can be interview and focus group.

· Next Step

The wireframe should also go into a user's validation, although it is still in the ideation phase. I'd better make sure the direction is not a wrong one.

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