A mobile application for tourists in that provides crowd density data of Thai tourist attractions, by tracking number of wireless devices, and suggests alternative locations with fewer people. This is a project submitted to The Innovative Tourism Project Pitching 2021.
Thai tourism industry is being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, since people are afraid of exposure to the virus in crowded places. Our goal is to design a product that can encourage Thai people to travel in post-COVID situation, so that Thai tourist businesses can recover.
However, 3 out of 9 interviewees didn’t actually match the criteria due to miscommunication.
We didn’t do the user interview due to limitation of time, which I regret not doing so since we lose chance to gain more insight
According to Thai Hotel Association, 90% of local bussiness had to shut down due to the pandemic. 50,000-60,000 local labour workers were unemployed. This showed that COVID-19 posted high impact on tourism industry. Our initial thought was that people are afraid of being infected while staying in crowded places.
In order to validate our thoughts, we launched an online survey asking how people feel about tourist congestion and what would they do if their destination is crowded.
We also asked about how the platform and existing products they use when traveling or finding information about each tourist detination, so that we know where can we learn more about the current pain point.
According to the survey, most tourists don’t like crowded place and 75% of them would rather find other destination, which may affect their travel plan and waste their time in finding new destination.
We only focus on fixing the mentioned underwater issues. What we lack is the user research.
1 hour to 15 minutes is the approximate work-to-break ratio that can maximise productivity.
How might we reduce tourist congestion By designing an platform that notify tourist about the crowdedness level So that Thai local tourism businesses can be promoted?
Diona, a college student who cannot stop herself from working, needs to take 15-minute breaks every hour in order to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
We scoped down the users’ demographic to Generation Z, which is the age group that is familiar with digital technology the most.
During the brainstorming session, we came up with the idea of tracking the level of crowdedness of each tourist attraction.
We firstly thought about the way Google Map shows real time traffic data. We have researhed about other existing products that use similar technology to validate is this is really possible. Some products count the number of wireless devices to know if the place is crowded, which may be possible for crowd tracking feature.
We have created the UX storyboard together to make sure we all understand what the product does and how users go through it.
We created a sitemap to show all the feature this product offers and how they structured.
We brainstormed and listed the name and tagline, then we voted. The name we chose is Vaccay, and the tagline is Flee and free from crowd.
We looked into references and agreed that we wanted the user interface to be clean and simple. We did some paper sketches and created the logo with Figma.
Then we created a UI style guide. We chose blue as primary color since it represent the color of the sea which is one of Thailand’s popular natural landmark.
We created wireframe based on the sitemap, including the signing up flow, the map, the information of each place and other minor pages.
These are the hi-fi prototype that we submitted for the first round of contest. However, when we were notified that we got into the final round, we decided to refine the user interface
We all agreed that the identity of the product could look more unique and we want to emphasize the element that tell the level of crowdedness. We also added the onboarding page to give user brief detail of VACCAY.
We created the home page with recommended places, instead of using the map screen as home page. We also added the bottom navigation bar so that it is easy to switch pages.
The new design of location info sceen only shows level of crowdedness after first tap, as it is the data we wna t to emphasize. If users are interested in other information they can slide the sheet up.
The pin color on the map also indicate the crowdedness level of that place. VACCAY also suggested the alternative places in “Similar Place” tab.
Users can save places they like and write reviews to help others know more about the place.
We decided to conduct a uability testing with 5 potential users to know if the app provide good user experience and to know wheter the crowdedness level interface is easy to understand.
Most participants said that the interface is clean and simple, making it easy to use. The crowdedness level is really dominant. Some said that it is quite hard to navigate when they’re on home page.
We have learned a lot throughout the process. The most important thing I realized we’ve missed is how crucial user research is. After I graduated I reflected back to this project. I have learned how to treat the design process as a flexible procedure not a predetermined checklist.
The first thing I regret that we didn’t do is the user interview during the first phase. We only have data from online survey which did not provide insight like how users choose tourist destination or how they decide to go to crowded place.
After I did my senior project I also realized that talking to experts is also crucial when we are working with issues that we, design student, are not familiar with. I would like to consult with engineer so that we know how can we make the crowdedness tracking feature possible.
