Radar

2018
Planning trip itineraries doesn’t always start when you sit down to figure it all out. Oftentimes, discovery and planning can happen at any time. Radar is a personal conceptual exercise in figuring out how to ease the trip planning process using the widely used visual platform, Instagram.

Key Insights

  • Be extra

    Thinking back to their trip, users don’t regret their level of planning. Instead, all users wish that they had planned more.

  • Two types of people

    Active planners use multiple apps to plan the day-to-day while passive planners will just look at Instagram or blogs just prior to their trip.

  • Instagram influence

    Instagram is used as a travel planning solution for both the discovering and planning stage—as travel inspiration and to find out what to pack based on recent images.

Competitive Analysis

Based on the user interviews, I audited two apps that were frequently used for trip planning—TripAdvisor and Yelp. Lastly, although not an obvious competitor, I also took a look at Instagram and how it contributes to creating an itinerary.

  • Pro

    TripAdvisor is the most popular travel product that covers both planning and booking. Users are also able to create an itinerary based on the places they have bookmarked in the app.

    Con

    Being the leading source on travel content, users are inundated with information and choices requiring a lot of scrolling and researching before coming to a final decision.

  • Pro

    When it comes to reviews on local restaurants, nightlife, and home services, Yelp is a popular product on crowdsourced reviews; providing relevant details and the ability to ask questions to the community.

    Con

    For international travel, reviews on Yelp aren’t as robust and users are limited to just restaurants and nightlife. And although users can bookmark interesting places, the only action they can take is to reference that list.

  • Pro

    The most popular photo-sharing social networking service where users can connect with friends and follow people of interest. It is evolving into a real-time communication platform and users are finding other use cases— shopping and travel inspiration.

    Con

    For unintended purposes such as travel, Instagram is not suited as a travel planning solution.

Key Opportunities

With a particular user archetype in mind and understanding the journey a user goes through when planning a trip, I asked the following questions:

1. What can be done with already-saved images?
2. What happens to a user’s itinerary when there’s a hitch?
3. What if the user needs more inspiration or just has no idea

User journey
Task flows
Wireframing
Next Steps

Sharing capabilities
Connecting with friends and seeing what’s on their radar
Using machine learning to generate more personalized itineraries based on what the user has already favorited or created