Jae Eun Kum

Feature Integration

YELP

Plan and Share Your Travel on Yelp

SUMMARY

Situation

When planning a trip, people use different platforms to look up where to go and what to do to enhance their trip experience.

Approach

This project encourages travelers to share their experiences on Yelp so they can create trip itineraries in one place.

PROJECT SCOPE

Add a feature on Yelp mobile app that users can make trip itinerary using social aspects

TEAM

Mary Rizaldo

Richie Chen

Shuhan Yu

ROLE

Conducted user research, synthesized the findings, created a persona, and created the first wireframes with the team members
Created prototypes, conducted user testings, refined wireframes and prototypes to higher fidelities based on team discussions

METHOD

Screen Survey

User Interview

Persona

Affinity Mapping

Feature Prioritization

Wireframes

Prototyping

Usability Testing

Introduce the Project

Yelp

Yelp is a local-search service powered by crowed-sourced reviews and recommendations. Yelp hosts Yelp.com and Yelp mobile app that dealing with restaurants, shopping, accommodations, nightlife, entertainment, things to do, etc.

Project Goal

We aimed to increase users' engagement with Yelp mobile app by integrating features that

help customers plan a trip itinerary
Allow customers to share trip experiences with friends
implement a social feature to the app

Understanding the Space

To accomplish the project goal, we conducted

Screener Survey

to find qualified interviewees
- use one or more apps to plan & share their trip
to discover what kind of products users are using

User Interview

to understand

how users create itinerary
how users share trip experience
what their needs and pain points are

Synthesis & Findings

After the research, the team shared and synthesized the findings, and defined the core problem.

2 Different Roles of Users

by Trip Phases

Survey: 34 responses | Interview: 6 qualified users

We collected data following the entire travel process of users.
We grouped research findings by 3 different phases: Planning, during, & after the trip
Then we found two different roles of users: Planner & Sharer

Planner

Target User as Planner

INTENSITY OF PLANNING

Low Intensity

Middle Planner

Spontaneous Improvisor

Perfectionist

Our User

High Intensity

Users like to prepare for their trip, but during the trip, they tend to improvise.
They keep checking itinerary during trip as well as searching for information about local places & events.

Prefer Visual Information

Planners prefer visuals, such as

photos, videos & maps

to help them make decisions about their trips.

Issue

Planners use

multiple platforms for itinerary creation.

They need different platforms for different purposes.

There is

no single platform for users to

get all the necessary information
create itinerary

Sharer

Comfort Level of Sharing

In different social circles,

sharers use

different platforms

with different forms of information

to share their trip experience

It is because sharers are willing to provide

more detail & personal information to their friends than to strangers

PERSONA

From our research, we found our project has two different primary personas who critically affect each other's activity on the platform

Main Pain Points

Sarah (sharer)

It is time-consuming to organize trip experience to share with friends and family.

James (planner)

He has to use multiple platform to collect data and create his itinerary

Problem Statement

When planning around a trip, users constantly search different platforms to look up where to go and what to do to enhance their trip experience.

How might we create incentive to encourage travelers to share their experiences on Yelp’s platform in order to mitigate travel planning for users?

APPROACH

Defining Features

Ideation

My team conducted 4 rounds of ideation sessions.
In each round, we came up with ideas, refined and organized them, and funneled the ideas into a single core idea.
From the sessions, we identified a few core design strategies for the project.

Design Strategy

Social Media Platform

Integrating social media should motivate sharers to share more experiences.

Photo Sharing & Bookmarking

Both planners & sharers prefers to use photos & videos to get information and share experiences.

Mapping Out Travel Route

Let planners map out a route more directly from sharers' posts

Drag & Drop for Planning

Intuitive interface to bring the sharer's experience to the planner’s itinerary

Feature Prioritization

Using the established strategies as criteria, we prioritized features from the ideation sessions by importance and feasibility.
From this, we determined core features of the project.

Core Features

(New & Existing)

We combined Yelp's existing features with our new features.

Yelp's Existing Feature

Map

Check-in

Geotag

Photo Uploading

Friends

Feed

Bookmark

Our new feature

Calendar

Drag&Drop

SOLUTION

Refining Features

Initial Sketch

After prioritizing the features, we wrote the flow of the product usage.
Then, we sketched the key screens of the flow while creating the sitemap.

Wireframes, Prototypes & Iteration

Using the sketches, we created wireframes and prototypes.
Then, we conducted 3 rounds of usability testing with 4 users per round.
After each round, I improved the interface to higher fidelity wireframes based on feedback .
The team decided the details of interface together, and then I created the wireframes by myself, and prototypes with another teammate.

Initial Sketch

Circulation of Planning & Sharing

one user: both sharer & planner

- get inspired from other sharer's experience

- create itinerary from the gathered info

- share experience during & after the trip

Photo Album Feed

Users can search trip photo album posts of their friends from feed

Photo Post

Users get inspired by each photo post and save on their bookmark page

My Bookmark List

Bookmarked photos are automatically categorized by location using geo tag

Trip Itinerary

Users can create itinerary using bookmarked photos. They can drag photos from the map to calendar

Circulation of Planning & Sharing

Every user can be both sharer & planner

When planning trips, users get inspired from other sharers' experience.

Then planners create itineraries from the collected information.

During the trip, users become sharers who share experience during & after the trip so that other planners can get inspired.

Drag & Drop Interaction

for creating itinerary

When creating itineraries, users can check the location of bookmarked photos from the map and easily plan the travel route of each day.
Users can intuitively drag each photo from the map to the calendar for planning.

Geotag

for album auto-creation

Each photo includes geotag of the place it was taken, and the metadata of each geotag includes yelp’s data about the location.

Using the geotag of each photo, users can

Create photo albums automatically

Sharing:

Photo Journal of Trip Experience

When uploading a photo, the app attaches a geotag to photo using GPS information, and automatically creates an album by city.

Planning:

Bookmark albums of inspiring photos

When bookmarking photos, the app creates a bookmark album that is categorized by cities using the geotag of each photo.

Bookmarking a photo

My bookmark list

Share a photo

My Trip Album list

Get Spot Information from the photo

By clicking photos of the map, users can get spot information from Yelp's database and use it for trip planning.

Iteration

Albums on Feed

"I want to know what's in it before click the album"

Issue

Users wanted to see the content instead of an album cover so they can decide to click it or not

Approach

We Changed the cover to photo slides

"Why am I looking at Seattle instead of Hawaii?"

Issue

Users were distracted by the big size of city names to focus on the testings

Approach

We made the city names smaller

Iteration

Album Lists

"I want to know what's in the album before I click on it"

Issue

Users wanted to see the content instead of an album cover so they could decide whether they should click it or not.

Approach

We changed the cover to photo slides.

"Why am I looking at Seattle instead of Hawaii?"

Issue

Users were distracted by the large size of city names.

Approach

We made the font size of city names smaller.

"I have no idea what I am supposed to do here"

Issue

Because the interface is unfamiliar, users were not sure what to do.

Approach

we made the map bigger, and put the calendar below so the users can

mainly focus on the map to get the information from bookmarks.
Then drag the photo to the calendar for planning.

"I thought these were photos"

Issue

The calendar carousel was confusing because it looked like the photo albums.

Approach

We added calendar icons on the carousel so that users could easily recognize that it was a calendar.

Itinerary Creation

REFLECTION & NEXT STEP

More intuitive dragging interface instruction: Our team learned that introducing new interface, such as dragging photos to the calendar to create itinerary, is not easy. Even though users like the interface after they understand how to use it, it has been challenge for first-time users. This project is a good opportunity for us to think about how to provide more intuitive instruction of new interface

Integration with existing Yelp interface: During the ideation phase, we found that Yelp already has many care features we need for this project. We could have had a good time integrating the existing features with our new features. Now, we have to conduct more usability tests to make sure users can easily map out our new trip itinerary feature with existing Yelp interface.