Zeit — time travel booking website

SCOPE
Responsive website design for a hypothetical time travel tourism company

PROCESS
User research and persona creation
Information architecture
Branding
UX/UI design
Prototyping and User testing
Iteration

FOCUS
Branding, UX Research, Responsive web design

ROLE
Ux researcher and UX/UI designer

Go to prototype

Project overview

The human race has been dreaming about time travel for ages. Now it’s finally possible! Truly, these are exciting times to live in!

Developed over a decade ago by Virgin Group Time Travel Tourism Program is finally democratized and available to the general public.

A total of 289 destinations all over the world - from prehistoric times through today - have been approved and finalized to receive travellers at any moment. People will travel to controlled and protected places, where interaction with locals will be limited. However, Zeit travellers will be able to look at and do things typical of the time, such as workshop activities or attending shows.

Research Goal

The research goal was to find out what determines the way people choose their travel destinations so that we can encourage travel sales whilst designing a comfortable and safe environment for a new product

Competitor Research

Summary

Currently there is no direct competitors to Time Travel website. The travel industry in particular has gone to great lengths to cultivate its online presence. The online travel industry is primarily made up of expeditions websites, that sell packages, travel e-commerce sites and review sites. Travel e-commerce sites specialize in the selling of travel products such as flights, accommodation, and rental cars. These can be either purchased directly through a travel company’s website or through an online travel agency. Meanwhile, travel review websites, such as TripAdvisor, allow travellers to post their experience of hotels, restaurants, and other hospitality experiences online.

Empathy research

Interview summary

All participants have reservations about the safety and reliability of time travel
Finding good price-quality compromise is a very difficult task, finding the best deal on a given day is frustrating due to too many options
Filters were the feature all 4 interviewees said was the most useful
Travelling to a new destination is better done together with significant other or a small group of friends with similar interest

Persona creation

Based on the conducted research, I could see that the archetype that would be an ideal Zeit user is one who is more of an explorer in travel - interested in cultures, history and is not afraid to try new things. **She represents the common goals, needs, wants, and frustrations among users**

Storyboard

To determine which features and solutions to implement, I first listed out the common business and user goals along with tech considerations to ensure the product would satisfy the goals of all stakeholders.

Using data collected from the feature roadmap, card sorting exercise and empathy research I created a site map, potential user flow, made sketches and digitalized them into low-fidelity wireframes

I designed a UI kit that was used to create high fidelity wireframes for the task flow screens.

After that I created a prototype on Figma and conducted Usability testing in person and with Maze.

Prototype

Please press ‘Options’ (in the top right corner) - ‘Scale down to fit’ for better interaction with the prototype

Usability Testing Objectives

Usability Testing Summary

All users successfully completed the usability test with more than 75% error-free rate which shows that the interface is intuitive as expected with minor iterations required. Due to the nature of the prototype that has certain constraints and limited features users were not able to roam freely and browse all of the website

Users were asked to find a trip called "Van Gogh's France" and choose a date to book.

Due to prototype’s constraints users were asked not to use the Search bar, but Navigation.

Some users tried to search the navigation on the left, which wasn’t included in the prototype’s function, instead of the datepicker CTA under the product description. Ultimately they found their way. Usability score is 86%.

Misclick rate on the Booking screen is high because the dates were preset and all that was required is to click on the form to make it fill in automatically. Usability score is 92%.
After using the datepicker, all the testers have successfully found the ‘Book now’ CTA. Usability score is 100%.

View full test results document here

Based on Usability Test Findings , the Affinity map and the Prioritization Matrix were created.

Prioritization Matrix
(Click to enlarge)

Priority iterations

Final Wireframes

Reflection

Zeit was a complicated but extremely interesting project. Certain assumptions were hard to validate as the product itself is hypothetical. I am proud to say that the users who participated in this project were completely immersed into it which helped make research as real as possible.
The pain points revealed after the usability testing were addressed and the recommendations were taken into consideration, and, as the result, all participants completed the task successfully. The testing helped determine the missing information crucial for the user to complete the task.
Being an unknown product, time-travel trips raise an understandable safety concern that we aimed to eliminate. After the conducted usability testing I can say the attempt was successful and the website has an appropriate atmosphere for a time-travel website.