Project Background

The initial concept was to have a historic website focussing on the four major cities across Ireland. Each city would focus on its main traits by researching the different historic ventures of the particular city(Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway).

Role

I was the UX/UI Designer. I managed all aspects of the project, from the initial user research and ideation, through to prototyping and user testing and content design.

Duration

4 Months. June 2020 - September 2020

Team

Ruairi Murphy- Product Owner, Dara Coyne- Project lead

Project Concept

The initial concept was to have a historic website focussing on the four major cities across Ireland. Each city would focus on its main traits by researching the different historic ventures of the particular city(Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway).

Stakeholder Interview

I started by conducting the stakeholder interview. This helped us to gain an understanding of the scope of the project from the business angle.

What I discovered

There were two main points we derived from the stakeholders' interview, which were:

✦ To educate individuals on the historic aspect of Ireland, most especially the four largest cities; Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway.

✦ To encourage citizens to explore their immediate environment during the pandemic. After identifying the main point, we proceeded to conduct the competitors' analysis.

Competitor Analysis

During this stage, I looked into 3 competitors; Ireland Travel Guides, Tourism Ireland and The Irish Road Trips.

What I discovered

User Interface: Nearly all competitors used a simple design, with one or two common user goals as a call to actions. There was also a similarity with the Navbar where information such as location was visible and easily accessible.

Searching Location: Usually, this was a straightforward process, with users choosing the preferred location from the drop-down menu and being brought to that locations page with loads of information to digest like activities within the different location and other related logistics like travel time and fees attached to the different activities.

Booking Tours: Usually, this was also a very simple one-page form, with users being brought to a different screen for more complicated actions and then brought back with the form filled. Useful elements I noticed were the ability to fill departure and arrival with the same action, and nearby or previously selected activities being highlighted.

Interface Copy: Most of the copy was either too long or not engaging enough. There were terminologies used that might not have been understandable to first time tourist which might lead to cognitive friction.

Quantitative Interview

During the quantitative research, a survey monkey survey was drafted to get an insight into how our users will perceive the proposed website.

What I discovered

A total of 109 individuals had taken the survey, the survey was completed by 103 individuals (with a 95% completion rate).

1. Of the polled participants 78( 72.22%) were female while 29(26.85% )were male

2. All participants were between the ages of 18 and 55+, with a higher percentage (95.37%) being within the 18-35 age bracket.

3. Participants consisted of Irish(44.68%), Nigerians(24.47%), British(5.32%) and Indians(3.19%).

Review of The Project Idea After Quantitative Research

The initial project idea was to have a historic tourism website. However, during the quantitative data analysis, I noticed clear patterns among the user groups and the idea soon developed into something more modern.

Young people between the ages of 18 and 35 want to have a 'staycation' in Ireland in any of the four largest cities( Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway) during the global pandemic.

The new development assisted in the structuring of the qualitative research to better suit the newly generated idea behind the tourism website.

Target Audience(18-35)

The information obtained from the quantitative study prompted the identification of a group of potential users for further analysis in the form of open-ended user interview questions. The user base was divided into two perspectives; Tourist Perspective and Business Perspective.

Problem Statement

Leadership tier levels encounter significant time-consuming challenges when conducting monthly meetings due to the limitations of the current Excel sheet used to facilitate these meetings. The existing Excel-based approach requires extensive manual effort, resulting in inefficient meeting management.

Affinity Diagram

I then ran an affinity workshop with two other designers. Our goal was to organise the data gathered from the research stage into clear insights that could be used to improve the product and avoid possible pitfalls.

By using Post-it notes for the thematic analysis technique, I arrived at the three main desires that the target group wanted/ pain points discovered.

What I discovered

We came up with an extensive list of goals for each stage of the user journey, which went into detail about all the problems and conventions that we found during the research stage. We also had general rules that we followed throughout each stage, which were:

✦ The primary goal is to explore the cities and possibly book a tour

✦ Clear and simple options for a user to pick

✦ A minimum amount of information input from the user

✦ Clear, concise but engaging copy

✦ Intuitive and visually appealing interface

✦ Be helpful and friendly.

Persona

From the qualitative research conducted, I created three personas(Business owner, International tourist and Irish tourist). At this stage, I created a user persona based on our earlier research. It was highly important to have a solid idea of who our user was to reference throughout the process.

Persona 1 (Business Owner) -Pain Points

✦ John is frustrated with the location of his pub because of the lack of a huge nightlife scenery

✦ He wants to appeal to a younger demography to keep his business fresh and relevant

✦ He cannot afford to have a full time online marketing team to promote his business.

Persona 2( International Tourist) -Pain Points

✦ Courtney wants to know where the locals go in order to experience real Irish culture and make new friends.

✦ Frustration with other website that lead her to tourist destinations filled with people twice her age.

✦ Due to her fashion nature, Courtney loves taking pictures. However, she often find difficulty locating the "instagram worthy locations".

Persona 3 (Irish Tourist) -Pain Points

✦ Too busy, so doesn’t have enough time to go through much information such as reviews on TripAdvisor.

✦ Planning weekends away with friends can be tough as there is no specific website for young people to plan a trip i.e what pubs to go to for a DJ set.

✦ Not knowing what activities for young people to do during the day.

Story Board

Site Map

I did a rough sketch with pen and paper on how the IA would look.This assisted in the visualisation of the physical structure of the website content. I made some adjustments and the final design developed using Adobe XD.

To ensure that the iterated information architecture(sitemap) matched the mental model of our users, I conducted a card sorting exercise.After the card sorting exercise, necessary adjustments were made to ensure that the website is as intuitive as possible.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

I started this process by doing a rough sketch using pen and paper. After which I designed the the wireframe on Invision. The design was based on the insight gotten from the user research.

There is a contact form on every page that given the clients the freedom to get in touch with a lawyer quickly

User testing was conducted with the users to see if the design decision solves their problem.

Pain Points Solved

Pain Point 1: The need for a personalised experience

‍Solution 1: A quiz was created to ensure users have a personalised experience

Pain Point 2: Ciaran(Irish tourist) expressed frustration in finding activities for young people to do during the day.

Solution 2: Activities were categorised into day and night time

Pain Point 3: Courtney( International Tourist) needed "Instagram worthy Places" to post pictures

Solution 3: A list of places with beautiful images, brief information and locations were included.

Pain Point 4: John( Business Owner) wants to appeal to younger demography to keep his business fresh and relevant.

Solution 4: The layout of the website was designed in an intuitive, engaging and interactive way to ensure our target audience(18-35) enjoy their experience while using the website.

Learning Experience

The enjoyable part of the project was discovering and learning at the same time. It was a bit difficult getting a hold of the interviewees because of the current pandemic, however I improvised using the available effective tools out there without compromising on quality and data. Apart from the data collected from user testing, I referred to UX guidelines and resources online, which assisted with the design iterative process.

© Oluwatoke Ayankoya 2021

Made with ❤️ from Dublin, Ireland