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Case study : Very Good Trip

UX/UI project

Duration : 4 weeks​

Solo project

Context :

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   To start this project, the General Assembly teachers put the students in pairs, and each member of the duo had to mention a problem he/she had to the other one, concerning an application/website. My partner's issue was related to her navigation system

Goals :

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   This project has been the first one I've done through the GA course, and aimed to bring the students in understanding the fundamentals of the UX process, seeing the main steps of the double diamond and apply them to give an answer to a problem

Support to present the final prototype : Figma

Steps of the project

To achieve this project as a student, we had to follow the double diamond diagram learnt in class regrouping the different steps of a work in a UX project which are :

DISCOVER

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Empathising with users in doing research

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  • Interviews

  • Contextual inquiries

  • Competitive analysis

DELIVER

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Creating a final prototype and iterating testings

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  • Final prototype

  • Usability testing

  • Feedback loop

DEFINE

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Synthesising the research to define a problem

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  • Affinity mapping

  • "I" statements

  • Journey mapping

  • Problem statement

DESIGN

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Exploring different design ideation insights

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  • Sketches

  • Wireframes

  • Low-fi prototype

RESEARCH

INTERVIEWS AND CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

   Even if I often use a GPS myself, and am confronted to some issues sometimes, I started the research by conducting 8 interviews to empathise with drivers' issues and understand the most common pain point they face.

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   As I was working for a company delivering furnitures for events, I have been able to do a contextual inquiry in observing a driver's habits and issues he faced in a professional environment.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

   These research led me to focus on 3 applications used by drivers and mentioned during the interviews : Googlemaps, Applemaps and Waze.

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   One of the main insights I collected was that the GPS is an application with a useful purpose, with one goal : giving a direction. Most of the users used the one by default on their phone because they didn't need to improve it, they got used to it, even if the features which were missing or incomplete were solved in one of the two other ones.

waze logo.jpg
googlemaps logo.jpg
applemaps logo.jpg

SYNTHESIZE

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AFFINITY MAPPING

Having done an affinity mapping helped me to pick the problem I was trying to solve, depending on the amount of people mentioning a pain point and also if this issue was not solved by another app :

CHOICE OF THE PAIN POINT

   Furthermore, a survey published by NRMA made me realise that this feature could help thousands of people around Australia, mainly around the big cities.

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   Another example observed when I was working for the event company : Sometimes, drivers parked on a bus stop risking a heavy fine.

*NRMA survey key points

Primary concerns :

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  • Cost (77%)

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  • Availability (69%)

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  • Parking limits (60%)

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  • Crowded car parks (60%)

  • 85% of Sydney motorists surveyed admitted to avoid certain locations for fear of not being able to find a car park

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  • 40%have ever returned home because they couldn't find parking

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  • 55% of the members said they had an altercation with other drivers over parking spot

Link of the survey : https://www.nrma.con.au/media/press-release/nrma-launches-new-parking-finder

PERSONA AND JOURNEY MAPPING

   I created this persona because I interviewed more women during the interviews, but the gender was not the most important factor. The point was to create a persona representing an active person using her car to move to different places around the city for temporary stops

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   The journey mapping highlights the frustrations and the level of stress that trying to find a parking spot could bring to motorists, and are due to 2 important factors : Time and money

PROBLEM STATEMENT

COURTNEY NEEDS TO FIND THE BEST PARKING SPOT TO AVOID TO SPEND TOO MUCH MONEY AND WASTE TIME

CURRENT AND FUTURE USER FLOWS

current user flow.jpg
future user flow.jpg

IDEATION

SKETCHES - Fundamentals

I started the ideation by sketching the home page and a few other pages like parameters, a map display, inspired by the other apps mentioned in the competitive analysis to give me a guide for designing the other pages

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Then I focused on the "parking spot finder" part of the application

   To design the content of the parking spot finder, I first did research on the 2 main options to park in Sydney : The street parking and the public parkings

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   For both of them, more than the description information, searching online and taking notes when I was driving in the city allowed me to collect data of what matters to people, keeping in mind Courtney's main issues : Prices and Time. To these general information we also can add an option for people with disability and a maximum height for public parkings

SKETCHES - Related to parking

Showing parkings

Public parking details

Street parking details

PROTOTYPE

MID-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

The first step of the prototype has been inspired by the other navigation applications to respect the starting steps with a home page and quoting the address of the destination, then adding the option to search a parking spot depending on the time needed by the user

MID-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES (2)

Then when the time required has been entered in the journey plan, the user has the option in the choice of the spots ( with a difference between how public parkings and street parking are represented) with clickable interactions. Before validating, the user can have access to the informations he needs.

MID-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES (3)

The final steps of the path is the same than the other GPS leaving the user the choice of the route to go to the destination point.

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This proposition is a response to Courtney's problem statement to avoid her to feel frustrated and anxious as she has to find the parking spot the most appropriate to her needs.

TESTING AND FEEDBACK

   After having conducted a round of usability testing on Maze, some pain points have been mentioned by testers, mostly because of some UI design components which were not obvious and made the pathway confusing

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   The click-ability of the parking icons and street "elements" could be designed differently. Maybe in putting a white frame around or with light around? Proposing different options and collecting opinions would be a good option to take the easiest decision

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   The enlargement of the parking map square can be improved, and using testers' comments, we can try differently, in adding a CTA "click to enlarge", or even deleting this step and proposing the parking map straight on the display when the user chooses the time he needs to leave his vehicle parked.

WAYS OF IMPROVEMENT

   Here is another proposition of display to help users to find a parking spot easily. On this display, only the streets allowing cars to park are shown but we could add the public parkings as well.

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   We can also imagine another feature leaving the choice to users of showing only the street parkings or public parkings or both.

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   In conclusion, as it was the first project and everything had to be learnt, it stayed incomplete but deserves a better final proposition especially according to the  possibilities it offers

IMPROVING UI DESIGN

After I finished the course with General Assembly, I looked back at this project and felt a bit regretful to leave it unachieved (with a poor UI design) for 2 reasons. The first one is that is the project which made me enjoy UX design, and the second one is that I truly believe that this idea could work as a feature for a GPS application. 

And so, to give it a new look more attractive, I decided to choose a colour palette established with results found in the research :

BLUE : Security, Reliability, Trust, Intelligence

GREEN : Balance, Reassurance, Rest

IVORY : Calming colour, Softness

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