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YOUJI

YOUJI is a travel journal app which acts as an easy going, reliable and inspiring travel buddy who remembers the travellers' stories and provides them with inspiration throughout the trips.

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Story

I believe travelling is the best way of having new experiences. The world is like a big book and I want to remember what I learn from this book throughout the journeys. Hence, I want to see how can I record the memories in a better and more organised way, which also allows me to look back on them more easily in future. Then I talked to some travellers and conducted some web research to see what do others think.

Process

Conducting interviews

I interviewed some young travellers aged from 20-35 who travel at least twice a year, wish to experience the world, connect with new people and want to remember their journeys’ details. Conducting interviews to gather information is important since it can help me discover things that I don't know.

youji-interview

From the interviews and research, I created an empathy map to organise the findings based on the feeling, goals, and frustrations of the interviewees and what do they hear/see throughout their journeys, after the journeys and when they record their journeys.

youji-empathy_map

Analysed the patterns in the empathy map, I gained some insights from the findings which helped me draw a problem statement for my project.

Insights:

  • Other than tour guide books, the travellers like to know about the new places from different perspectives such as from the locals and other travellers.
  • Various reasons and importance of recording the trips: memory falters / to remember where did they visit / to share the experience with others / for self-reflection
  • Travel journal is a good way for people to recall their travel memory
  • Record a comprehensive experience needs more than one medium
e.g. photos, videos, text
  • Writing detailed note everyday is difficult to sustain, however it’s good to keep recording small details everyday
  • They feel great and satisfied when sharing travel experience with others
  • Hard to find a specific photo of a trip afterwards because they take too many photos
  • Not having much time after the trips to research for missing pieces of information and to organise their travel records
  • Solo travellers can’t poach their friends’ memories for missing details
youji-problem_statement

Building personas

Based on the research, I built two personas that incorporated the user goals, interests and frustrations. The personas represented the users of my solution.

The main target user of my solution is someone like Mavis, who’s a frequent traveller and like to experience the world as much as she can. She wants to keep her travel records in an organised way and perhaps to publish a travel book in future. However, she's lack of organisation skills and time to make a nice and useful travel record.

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Someone like Thomas is my another target user. He’s an occasional traveller and he likes to share his travel experience with others through his blog and videos. During his journey he likes to talk to the locals and other travellers.

Thomas finds it’s hard to keep his travel blog up to date since he needs a lot of time to organise the travel record and research for the missing details after his trips.

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Competitive analysis

What solutions are available in the market? I studied a few apps of travel journal creation to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. This provided me with useful hints to design a travelogue app with better usability.

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User journey

The user journey of the travelogue app is pretty straight forward. Travellers register an account then they can start creating a journal from the beginning of their trips. They can add memories with various media format. They can view and share their journals, and view other travellers’ journals as well. A reward system is used to motivate them to keep recording their journeys.

youji-user_journey

Low-fidelity prototype

I created a lo-fi prototype with screens of the main features of the product and conducted testing with a number of users to test my initial approach.

From user testing I found that it is not a good approach. User thought that having this progression in recording their journeys was too formal, unfriendly and lack of flexibility. User testing is necessary at this early stage to avoid putting much time and effort in designing a solution in wrong direction which doesn't fit user needs.

youji-low_fi_prototype

User interface design

Travelling is an act of collecting memories. In YOUJI, I applied rich and relevant imagery in the UI design to create an impressive user interface design. While designing the user interface, I am very conscious of maintaining a consistency in visual elements including the font, colour theme, icon style, etc. across the product.

To reflect the brand image of YOUJI, which acts as an easy going and inspiring travel buddy who remembers the stories of travellers' journeys, the copy in the user interface was written in human, warm and friendly tone. Right from the moment the user starts to use the app, it knows where the traveller is and communicates with the user “Shall we create a journal of your wonderful trip together?”, which sounds like a buddy.

youji-hero

Create a travel journal

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View journal details

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Explore other travellers' journals

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Usability testing

UX design is an iterative process. I conducted usability testing with some users by setting up scenarios and assigned them tasks to complete. Through this, I learnt about what features do the users value and what they don't. I gained useful comments which helped me refine and improve the design. For example, I learnt that the user needed more tips to tell them what to do next in their first time use; I recognised I overlooked the importance of video recording; I found that the route generating feature with the map is a value added point, and the user reflects it would be even more helpful if they can view other travellers’ routes in the map.

youji-user_testing

The world is like a big book and I wish all of you enjoy reading it and going to create beautiful memories all over the world. Thank you for viewing the case study. 

You may check out the prototype of YOUJI here.

(Imagine you are going to start your wonderful journey in Melbourne!)

Selected Works

handyUX/UI, Web, App

Peak ReinsuranceUX/UI, Web

YOUJIUX/UI, App

© 2021 Vicky Chiu (chiuching)