Wishes Family Travel
Building the Travel Videos Feature
A ferociously talented group of Travel Agents needed a way for their clients to really see their ferocious talents in action. Come with me while we watch how Wishes Family Travel’s Video feature came to be.
Duration: 3 Weeks
Tools Used: Figma, FigJam, Optimal Workshop, Squarespace
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Project Background and Problem
Solution
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Goals and Objectives
SWOT Analysis
Card Sort
Research Findings
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User Flow
Task Flow
Lo-Fi Wireframe
Hi-Fi Wireframe
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Research Goals and Success Metrics
Usability Testing
Part 01: Introduction
Project Background
Wishes Family Travel (WFT) is a luxury travel agency that focuses on bucket list travel experiences for families and couples alike. They have requested the addition of a dedicated vlog page with a quick and easy method of video upload for agents, as well as a comprehensive and well organized tag system for navigation purposes.
Solution:
Our Problem?
WFT lacks a dedicated travel videos page that allows clients to view relevant travel content quickly and easily, and subsequently no way to browse said content!
Integrate a delightful, easy to navigate Travel Videos feature into WFT's website keeping Squarespace's video categorization limitations in mind.
Research Goals
Part 02: Research
Improve existing search function for WFT’s website
Ensure users spend as little time as possible searching for a vlog
Ensure the new travel vlog page is well-organized and pleasant to use
Attract a much more tech-minded client base with attractive, vlog style content
SWOT Analysis
User Persona
Meet Amanda - She’s the result of hours upon hours of successful user research. Like most WFT clientele, she’s a woman in her mid-40s, has multiple children, and is only marginally more comfortable browsing online travel sites than the generation before her would be.
Research Objectives
Understand user pain points when navigating video hosting websites
Determine most common keywords used for travel vlog search
Compare UI of both primary (i.e. Virtuoso, Black Tomato) and secondary (i.e. Vimeo, Youtube) competing products
Card Sort
Hybrid card sort
10 participants
Assisted in organizing product’s IA
User feedback allowed us to create a more robust, comprehensive tag system with categories not previously considered
Research Findings
Fewer tag categories were necessary than initially anticipated
Users found current website’s UI outdated and difficult to navigate
Most users familiar with and refer YouTube’s UI and search functionalities
A broader category system, rather than a tag system, was most user’s preferred method of browsing travel related videos
Iteration 1
User Flow
Part 03: Design
Homepage
Creating the user flow for navigating to the Travel Videos page was quite simple: we needed to define how a user would navigate from the WFT homepage to the Travel Video's page, and what alternative actions the user could potentially take during their journey.
Low-Fi Mockups
Layouts inspired by both well established video hosting websites (Youtube) and larger luxury travel agencies (Virtuoso, Black Tomato)
Accommodating for SquareSpace's design limitations including a lack of tag system for video uploads; very important to keep that limitation in mind
Ensuring the "Travel Videos" layout looked cohesive with the rest of the site
Iteration 2
Task Flow
With the user flow completed, we were able to breeze on by to the task flow: filtering travel videos by category.
Category Select
High-Fi Mockups
Having kept in mind Square Space’s design limitations, I moved forward with some final designs. Here’s what I kept in mind:
Information Architecture - I wanted to ensure videos on the vlog page were structured in such a way that the most relevant vlogs to a user’s search would be front and center, as the primary userbase for WFT are older adults without much technological prowess.
Consistency - WFT already had an established website with clear visual direction. The new vlog page had to match the aesthetic of the rest of the website.
Business Goals - Ultimately, I had to balance my design decisions with the goals of the business. We worked as a team to monitor my progress and create a vlog page that would drive more traffic to the WFT website.
Videos
Iteration 3
Part 04: Prototype
At-a-Glance
To test our prototype, four unmoderated participants were given a brief summary of their task and hopeful end results, and then were asked to provide feedback after completion.
Sucess Metrics
The user is able to complete their assigned task within a reasonable time
Users are able to quickly locate "Travel Videos" page from home screen
Users can easily navigate to the "Video Categories" dropdown
Process of sorting videos by category is easy, intuitive, and requires little thought
Feedback Grid
Research Goals
Determine accessibility for disabled users
Ensure UI of Travel Videos page is simple, familiar, and easy to navigate
Determine how quickly it takes a user to sort videos by category
Eliminate all unnecessary steps to save on time spent completing tasks
Prototype
Prioritizing Results
Replace “Travel News” header dropdown with separated “Travel Blogs” and “Travel Videos” navigational items
Move location of search bar to “all videos” section of travel videos page
Resize all buttons to ensure they meet human interface guidelines
Final Thoughts
What I’ve Learned So Far…
Soft skills are just as important as hard skills. Communicating with the WFT management team put my communication abilities to the test, as I delicately navigated justifying my design choices with accepting and implementing changes requested by the business.
As a new UX/UI designer, I tend to focus too much on creativity and not enough on collaboration. The field of UX is an incredibly broad and dynamic one, but the majority of employment opportunities involve collaborating with non-designers and understanding what my collaborators bring to the table.
Square Space’s design engine is limiting and, at times, frustrating. In the future I’d like to steer away from working on projects requiring Square Space.