Wanderbuddy is a platform that curates walking routes through cafes, museums, galleries, and more to help you discover your city's hidden gems. It encourages locals and newcomers to explore their city engagingly and offers a feature to connect with like-minded explorers for an enhanced urban experience.
Problem Statment
"Newcomers often feel overwhelmed by unfamiliar cities, unsure where to go or how to discover meaningful experiences."
"Explorers crave connections with like-minded people to share their journeys and uncover the city’s unique spots together."
"Even locals struggle to find the hidden gems that make their city truly special, missing out on the charm right in their backyard."
Business Needs
Encouraging Exploration Beyond the Ordinary
Motivates users to break their routine and explore new corners of the city, uncovering hidden gems and fresh experiences.
Fostering Connections for City Exploration
Create a secure and communal environment on the platform to encourage like-minded explorers to team up for shared city adventures.
I was the UX designer of Platform Wanderbuddy.– A dynamic networking platform for city explorers to connect and discover.
This conceptual project was created at UX-Land Online School as part of a project focused on User Experience and User Interface:
Duration: 4 Weeks(part-time)
Team: 4 member
Tools: Figma, Figjam, Miro, Photoshop, Google Forms, Open AI
Scope
Wanderbuddy was designed as a comprehensive platform, integrating both a website and a mobile application. This dual-platform approach ensures accessibility and convenience, providing users with a seamless experience regardless of their preferred device.
Who are our users?
Adventurous
This refers to a person who is new to the city and eager to explore its surroundings, meet new people, and immerse themselves in the local culture.
Design Strategy
Discover
To ensure effective and guided research, a research plan was created beforehand. This included: Research Goals / Research Questions / Assumptions and Constraints / Methodologies.
To ensure a structured approach, our focus was on understanding the business and the target audience. This involved gaining a comprehensive understanding of city-exploring experiences, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and delving into the preferences, frustrations, goals, and needs of our target audience. This integration of research elements aims to provide a foundation for analysis and decision-making.
Our first step in secondary research was to gain a deep understanding of the business and its users through market research and competitive analysis. This process helps us identify the strengths and weaknesses of similar businesses.
Competitive Analysis
In fact, there was no similar business introducing walking routes with named places when they were offered without tour guides and having the option to explore with a buddy as well. But we did analyze some similar businesses:
Strengths
The strengths of these businesses are their information architecture, multiple categories and filters, and actual categorization.
Weakness
In all of these businesses, the weakness was not engaging with the users through platforms and not following up with them.
Social Group Gatherings
Location-Based Recommendations
Trail Exploration and Hiking
Unique Local Adventures
As a result, it provided us with some insight into similar platforms, and we could use this to create a survey.
Survey
A survey consisting of several questions aimed at understanding people's preferences and behaviors when it comes to exploring their cities and new places. These questions covered a range of topics, from the:
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Frequency of local exploration
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The types of places individuals enjoy visiting the most
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Their interest in popular tourist spots versus hidden gems
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Their desire to connect with others during explorations
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Importance of detailed itineraries
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Willingness to pay for certain exploration-related features
In total, 50 randomly selected respondents shared their perspectives, helping us gain valuable insights into the needs and preferences of our target audience, and as a result, we found potential users for interviews by analyzing the answers.
Interview
We conducted interviews with a total of 12 participants, including both residents and newcomers to the city.
We asked more open-ended questions, allowing for a discussion with the interviewees rather than a straightforward question-and-answer format.
We wanted to figure out:
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How are they currently discovering new places to visit?
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What challenges or issues do they face with their current methods?
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Have they had any similar experiences before?
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What are their concern about having a partner during exploration?
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What kind of concerns might they have about using this platform?
As a result, we found some concerns about them.
Define
After secondary research and getting some ideas from survey analysts and interviews, we started our affinity diagram.
Top takeaways
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Users prioritize transparency in partner information, value authenticity through verified profiles, and seek insights into personality and feedback.
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Users prioritize website support for safety, prefer platform chat for communication, and highly value the security of personal information and photos.
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Users prioritize personalized routes based on preferences, exploration over distance and time, concise information, and flexibility for freedom.
To establish tasks for our design, and to communicate information about the users that we collected during research, we developed a persona and a scenario.
Next, we created personas to capture our users' key needs and behaviors.
Sarah
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29 years old
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Lives in Toronto
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Singel
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Designer
Goals & Needs
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Discovering the City
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Making Connections
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Seeking Local Guidance
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Feeling Safe and Welcome
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Flexibility and Adaptability
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Recently moved to a new city for education, She is excited about her new chapter but feels a bit overwhelmed and isolated in an unfamiliar environment. Sarah is eager to explore the city, meet new people, and build a social circle to make her feel more at home.
Guiding the Design Process: How Might We Questions Based on Users Needs
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How Might We Simplify City Exploration for Newcomers?
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How Might We Foster Meaningful Connections in a New Environment?
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How Might We Provide Reliable Local Guidance to Enhance City Living?
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How Might We Ensure Newcomers Feel Safe and Welcome in Their New Surroundings?
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How Might We Create Flexible Solutions for Evolving Needs in a New City?
User Flow
Wireframes
As part of our Ideation process, we sketched out low-fidelity wireframes by hand, which helped us in the early stages of the design process and improved communication among team members.
Sketches
Then we created low-fidelity wireframes on Figma to map out page layouts. The wireframes went through a couple of rounds of iteration before the final content was developed.
Low-fidelity
Challenges & Solutions
After analyzing all of our research, we began to understand our project challenges and tried to find a solution to our design.
Challenges
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Fostering Trust and Accountability in User
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Feedback Handling
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Personalization
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Safety and Privacy
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Community Building
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Balancing Information
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Accessibility
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User Engagement
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Mapping and Navigation
Solutions
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Create a Profile for the user
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Reviews and photos added by users
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Filters based on their interests in visiting
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Add identity verification
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Filters based on their interests for walking partner
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Sharing their experiences with other
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Short and to-the-point descriptions
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Visual appeal
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Mobile application
Challenge
Online platforms often pose challenges for users to establish trust and ensure accountability, especially regarding safety and privacy.
Solution
To solve this challenge, we introduced user profiles with optional identity verification. This builds confidence and accountability. Users can also receive reviews and photos from other members, promoting transparency and trust.
Challenge
Users often struggled to navigate unfamiliar cities and access meaningful, localized information. They felt disconnected and overwhelmed, as traditional navigation tools lacked a personal touch, leaving them without the context or stories that make exploration engaging and memorable.
Solution
We introduced an AR-enabled storytelling navigator that seamlessly combines navigation with real-time local insights. Users can easily access optimal routes while discovering stories, cultural insights, and recommendations for nearby locations through their camera view, creating an experience akin to walking with a knowledgeable local.
Challenge
Users often find themselves uncertain about the routes suggested by the website and seek additional viewpoints to make more informed decisions.
Solution
We added a review section for each route to empower users to share their experiences and insights. By creating a community-driven platform, we aim to enhance the user experience and create a vibrant space for sharing adventures.
Challenge
Users often feel overwhelmed when presented with excessive details about a route, making it challenging to absorb the necessary information without feeling frozen by the abundance of data.
Solution
We've solved the challenge by dividing route information into two parts. The first is a brief "vibe description" that captures the essence of the route. The second is a detailed section for location and essential information. This separation makes it easy for users to understand the overall feel of a route without being overwhelmed by unnecessary details.
Challenge
Users often struggle to navigate and select optimal routes, negatively impacting their accessibility and experience on the platform.
Solution
We have simplified route selection with an intuitive solution. Our features include clear categorization and personalized recommendations for a seamless experience.
Usability Test
In this case, the business model was a little different and new, so two methods of usability testing were used early in the project to test its usability:
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“Get it” testing
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Key Task testing
Get It Testing
When we conduct "Get it" testing, we show them the website's home page and ask them if they understand its purpose, value proposition, organization, and work processes.
Landing page (Before)
Version 1
Version 2
Version 3
Version 4
The landing page's last design, Redesign based on user’s feedback
Improvement
We changed the hero image which conveys the idea better.
We made the three steps of business features much more obvious.
We added a QR code to make it easier to get the application.
We added FAQs for users to get much into the website function.
Feedbacks
The search bar was so clear for them, that they had to start with that.
They got the main idea of the business through a hero image and the tagline.
Illustrations and text were connected and scannable for them to get the idea in the three steps part.
They liked that they could get the app quickly and we made it more obvious that we have an application too.
FAQs made it much easier to get their answers to the main questions.
"Key Task" Testing
Choosing a buddy section was one of our biggest challenges during the design process. It is an optional feature that if they want they can explore their interests routes with a buddy.
The Buddy section (Before)
Version 1
First, we put it under each route detail, but after lots of testing it became confusing whether it was optional or not or they thought it was a group trip.
Version 2
Secondly, we made it clear to them that it was not a group trip. However, there was still one problem: it was not obvious that it was an optional feature, and they could either be the organizers or others would be.
The buddy section's last design
Our final decision was to split the feature into two steps to make it more clear that it is an optional feature so that they could add someone to their journey by clicking on it, we split it into two parts, and they can be the organizer who accepts or rejects other requests, or who sends a request to others.
Prototype
As we started prototyping, we simplified the process by reducing the number of steps needed. This was especially true in the route details, where we had to provide concise and easily digestible information to improve efficiency and readability.
The Route’s details page (Before)
Version 1
There was no connivance or assistance provided with the route itinerary for users.
Version 2
There were much better route itineraries, but there were no pictures of each stop at the same time.
TheRoute’s details page's last design
Putting all the information on one page will make it easier to scan all at once, including the map, pictures, and information.
Reflection
What did I learn?
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We found it beneficial to conduct our user testing early on in the design process, as it allowed us to make low-cost changes to our mid-fidelity wireframes and improve user-friendliness.
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However, we may consider revamping our survey process by dividing it into two surveys. The second survey would focus on specific questions related to our website and would be sent to potential users.
What can we do next?
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I would like to improve the interaction design part.
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I would like to design the community section on the website.
