Integrate Travel Into Yelp App Product Design

Yelp- a Feature Optimization Story.

Overview (2018)

Yelp is without a doubt one of the lead applications for restaurant and business reviews. Google a household name, (verb) and world leader in the review and search engine market has recently come out with Google trips. This gives users the ability to search and browse as well as create an itinerary in one convenient spot. Google trips came out in 2017 with a couple bugs and currently sits at #71 on the charts in the travel category in the app store.

With Yelp's daily a ctive users a staggering 4 million the numbers are slowly dropping. Yelp's most recent efforts are their Collections feature that allows users to save and curate their own list similarly to an itinerary. I set out on a mission to optimize the list feature and test the existing usability of Yelp.

Research

The goals going into the screener survey were clear, we wanted to target travelers and find out their travel habits, frequency and the review influence when traveling.

It can be assumed travelers create an itinerary before they travel, check reviews to avoid risks and are frustrated because there isn't an app that can cater to all their travel needs.

We surveyed 69 users, both male and female between the ages of 18–55.

The results were revealing, 62% of users have traveled within the last 6 months with over 85% of users traveling traveling within the last year.

91% of users most usually create an itinerary when going on a trip and 82% always check reviews before going to a new location.

The winning application for trip planning was Google with a 95% of travelers using it for their trip planning needs with Yelp sitting in second place at 60%. 86% of travelers used multiple applications for their trip planing needs.

User Interviews

We interviewed 5 users, female and male, 21–35 who have traveled within the last 6 months. We wanted to find out why they do research before a trip, what they use, what influences their decisions and what they wanted to get out of it.

Affinity mapping- a process of organizing interview data

"I [read reviews because] like to see what other people say, I don't want to go somewhere that isn't good."

"I usually use Google or Yelp to plan my trips."

"I do research almost every single time I'm going to a new place."

Users do research before a trip because they want to get the most out of their experiences. Users care about the opinions of their peers and want to stay connected when traveling. Users are frustrated because there isn't one application to stay organized on.

Problem Statement

"How might we enable travelers to document all their

travel plans so they can get the most out of their experiences?"

How can we solve this problem? Travelers do research before their trip so they can have the best experiences and stay organized. Users like to stay connected while traveling and care about their peer's recommendations.

It became clear the two types of users we were designing for.

User Personas

Jessica J. is the user that always likes to stay organized, she plans everything in advance and is a successful travel blogger who needs to be able to share her collection with her friends and followers.

Muhammed A. is a more relaxed user who cares about staying connected, reading reviews and looking at his friends suggestions.

Design Iteration

Based on our research findings we decided to include the following features.

People create Itineraries before going on vacation > Improve the accessibility of the current "collection" (list) feature.

People do research and pre-plan before going on a vacation and look up reviews before going to to a new location > Increase ability to add new locations to the collections feature (improved bookmarking visibility).

People look at reviews to know what their peers think about a location. (People care what other people think) >Simplify the collections page to allow users to easily find their friends collections.

Design Studio Sketches and Brainstorming

Usability testing Round 1 Prototype 1

We conducted usability testing on five travelers to find the ease of creating a new collection, browsing and adding a new location to your collection, sharing your collection and finding a new location based on your friend's or followed collections.

Test findings, It was difficult for users to create a new collection, it was hard for users to browse and add a new location to their collection and the layouts of the pages often led to confusion. The majority of the tasks were completed by less than half the users.

Yelp testing

Testing with the Yelp app was very eye opening, we noted the patterns in the ability to complete a task and how it directly correlated with the layout of Yelp. The test finding results were similar to our first prototype. Most of the issues with completing the tasks was based on the layouts predesigned with yelp. We rearranged multiple things on the page to benefit easy access to boost the traffic of travelers to Yelp.

Final Testing and Improvements

Actual images of yelp on left. Design improvements in blue on right.

High Fidelity Prototype of Bookmark edit.

Test Findings Continued…

Our final design Iterations changed the layout of the home screen to better create a direct path for users to create and access their collections.

Change the layout of the collections page to better prioritize followed collections.

Change the book mark symbol to have an addition sign for intuitive addition to the collection page.

Limitations, Parameters, Resources, and Materials

I was given the opportunity to incorporate an itinerary feature in Yelp. After research and the opportunity to work with the app it made sense to improve on the app's existing feature that is similar to an itinerary. People are still very new to the collections feature and I am sure we were testing along side yelp to identifythe usability of this product.

Prototype

Check out our final Prototype.

Reflection/Retrospective

I learned there is a lot of benefits in extensive research. I also learned the benefits of testing an existing app and comparing the results to your prototype. The screener survey proved to be beneficial in finding the right candidates. If Yelp works on the layout of their existing app and tab bar I can see this feature taking off and becoming a leader in the travel industry. Throughout this process I have also realized the essentiality of have a UX designer contributing during every step the design process.

The benefits of working with a well diverse team streamlined the process and was both challenging and rewarding. I would like to thank my team for their hard work and ability to hit the ground running. I truly appreciate our collaborative efforts.