A mobile search database for Lonely Planet, reimagining travel preparation in a world of elevated safety risks and ever-changing regulations.
Note: This was a research and design project through General Assembly and is not associated or affiliated with Lonely Planet.
Team: ‘UXPlorers’ Carolyn McQuillan, Kate Fazio, and Awa Nyamuhindu
Timeline: 2 week sprint
My role: Content strategist, UI designer
Tools: Figma, Zoom, Miro, Google Suite, Trello, Slack, Whiteboard/Markers
What I did: Research, interviews, synthesis, prototyping, UI design, usability testing
The problem
Despite the strength of their brand with young travelers, Lonely Planet’s business has shrunk significantly during COVID-19. My team was tasked with designing a user-centered digital tool for young travelers living in social isolation during the pandemic.
The brand
Lonely Planet has published hundreds of guidebooks and sold tens of millions of copies. Not only are they one of the leading travel guidebook brands, but also travel media company, having branched out into mobile, video, international magazine editions, children’s books, lifestyle books, and ebooks.
Lonely Planet’s transition to digital has been met with critique, prior to strain from the pandemic causing them to shutter their online social forum and reduce publishing operations.
We wanted to reinvigorate offerings by testing some of our original ideas, but largely pulling from Lonely Planet’s extensive content library in new ways. We decided to design a responsive, mobile-first site for ease of integration and cost efficiency for the business.
Contextual interviews
To understand the needs of young travelers, we conducted 5 interviews with travel enthusiasts under 35. We gained insights on their trip planning habits, goals and motivations, concerns, and how COVID-19 has altered their travel. Our top learnings were:
Our persona
From this synthesis, we identified our persona, Danielle. Because she is U.S. based — where currently 35% of the U.S. population is vaccinated — she sees restrictions starting to lift, and is getting excited about traveling again. She wants to do so safely to protect herself and others, but restrictions and guidelines are constantly changing, and she finds it hard to know the right things to do.
To help Danielle, we ideated around the following focus areas:
How might we help her stay inspired about traveling if she’s not able or ready to do so?
How might we help her learn about a destination through a COVID safety lens?
How might we support her love of spontaneity while on a trip, despite rigidity /perceived rigidity of COVID requirements?
How might we support her desire for social connection with other travelers?
Initial concept
Our team brainstormed and sketched ideas in a 2-hour design studio, resulting in low- to mid-fi wireframes. These initial wireframes sought to help Danielle explore destinations, heavily filter criteria, save itineraries, learn about different cultures from home, and chat with other travelers.
We based our wireframes on two user flows:
Danielle who is not ready to travel yet. She needs ways to be inspired, plan trips, connect with people from other cultures, and save ideas for later.
Danielle who is ready to travel again, is vaccinated, and needs ways to plan her trips in a more serious, filtered way.
Competitive analysis: narrowing our focus based on market opportunity
We conducted a competitive analysis against popular travel brands EF Tours, Rough Guides, Encounters Travel, TripAdvisor, and Airbnb. This included a feature inventory, and two task analyses: looking at the number of steps involved in trip booking, and amount of time it took users to find COVID information.
During this research, we we made an influential discovery about how COVID information was being presented:
The majority of travel websites had disjointed, unintegrated COVID guidance.
In other words — there was simply text up at the top, and statements like “we care about your safety,” and “travel subject to regulations.” Some companies offered flexible booking policies and increased customer support. But only Airbnb added COVID information into their website for longevity — redesigning their navigation to elevate virtual experiences, outdoor/nature stays, and generating a new data set and icon to indicate which hosts are following enhanced cleaning standards.
But there was still a missed customer moment among all company sites: No one was telling Danielle she should probably not book that thing in Japan right now because the country is high risk. All of these companies would still take her money, and she might have no idea.
Even when Danielle does do her outside research, she has to spend time synthesizing multiple sources to get accurate information. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Australia looks like a good bet for travel right now. But according to the Australian Government Department of Health, we find out its borders are closed to non-citizens. Our test users were unanimously confused and frustrated by this:
Our team realized a risk rating would be critical to reducing Danielle’s cognitive load, and its accuracy crucial for earning her trust. In addition, constructing an information architecture designed for COVID-safety-first would be a differentiator in the travel media space.
Problem statement: Danielle, who loves to travel, needs a way to get accurate, up-to-date COVID-19 information to determine where and when she can safely explore new places in a post-pandemic world.
Medium-fidelity wireframes
We got to work sketching and drawing new mid-fi wireframes. Our information architecture designed for COVID-safety-first included:
Searching for destinations by COVID risk rating, instead of by continent or interests
Watchlist feature allowing Danielle to be notified when a destination has changed risk status and visually see health trends, instead of touristy images or flight price tracking
Page structure for high risk destinations, which elevated explore from home activities such as recipes, clothing boxes, language lessons; official resources, news and media, and virtual tours
Page structure for low risk designations, which elevated mask rules, testing and documentation requirements, restaurant and bar information, hotels and resorts, and official resources
Insights from travelers every step of the way about their COVID safety experience
Usability testing
We got this design in front of users and asked them to complete several scenarios. From observing our users, we learned on a positive front that the overall concept and color coding resonated. Issues arose around context for the search screen; understanding which filters were applied; misplaced signifiers on activity pages; and a mental model conflict with our use of horizontal image sliders. We prioritized working on feedback mentioned by two or more users before designing in high fidelity.
High fidelity prototype and usability
For branding, I leveraged Lonely Planet’s robust style guide which outlines their colors, fonts, button styles, and iconography.
For the tone, we wanted explanations and descriptions to be friendly, but not flippant or minimizing the seriousness of COVID.
After more usability testing, we made another round of adjustments:
Risk rating: The score ultimately was misleading to users, so we separated the two components of our data into their own icon sets — COVID risk level, and border status. We also changed low risk from green to yellow, matching the color system users were familiar with from the CDC.
Filtering: Originally our list defaulted to showing destinations with the “open/low risk only” designation. Even with an empty space message, users were frustrated nothing would show up when they typed “J” and they had to remove a filter they never chose to apply in the first place. We changed the default to be alphabetical with all filters off, and spent time guerrilla testing a few button designs.
User flows: To further test our information architecture and ideate on Danielle’s bucket list destinations, we added a new path for Kenya, which had the status of Very High Risk for COVID, but open to international travelers.
Final prototype
Without further ado, our paths:
Japan path (High Risk | Closed to travelers) Elevated official resources, news and media, and included but concealed virtual tours and at-home experiences.
Australia path (Low Risk | Closed to travelers) Elevated learning about attractions, news, and concealed but offered information on hotels and restaurants.
Kenya path (Very High Risk | Open to travelers) Elevated learning mask rules, testing and documentation requirements, restaurant and bar information, hotels and resorts, official resources, and insights from other travelers.
Watchlist Populated with Japan, Kenya, and Australia. Shows a summary, allows editing the list, and setting notification preferences.
Conclusion
We believe this design is built for longevity — the “new normal” when traveling — instead of wistfully and perhaps irresponsibly defaulting to pre-COVID experience design.
Danielle doesn’t need to be told that COVID-19 is happening anymore, but requires a sophisticated solution to knowing and understanding nuanced guidelines and regulations, enabling her to travel safely. We believe this design accomplishes this, while aligning with Lonely Planet’s goals to support responsible travel, provide in-depth information on destinations, and put travelers at the heart of everything they do.
Afterward
Reflections
There’s always more research and testing to be done. We have a significant backlog of ideas to continue iterating, validating, designing, and testing. Shoutout to the team for the broad scope of work and depth of research accomplished in 2 weeks, across 3 different time zones!
Regarding the data
We envision this website’s database connecting to the CDC for risk levels, and local government websites for border status. We recognize some challenges including:
Not every country provides COVID information
Systems span all different platforms and taxonomies
The data would need to be region-specific, as realistically travelers would be looking to go to Tokyo or Singapore, not just Japan or Australia
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