VELER

Mobile app designed to provide travel recommendations based on your network’s social media posts

What is the problem?

Recommendations are a dime a dozen, everyone has one! However, how do you know who to trust? Sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp have millions of contributors but users are skeptical about trusting a complete stranger who has no idea about your preferences.

“Should I try this? Who is Maria T? What if she likes pineapple on pizza?!”

— Survey #42

In order to learn more about the problem, we interviewed 50 people ages 20 to 45. Here’s what we learned:

What are the current tools available or possible competitors?

The UX

By using UX principles, we sorted all the information we gathered during interviews and managed to create an affinity map that had several common themes. The main theme was that people do a lot of research before traveling. They check several sources, however, friends, family and acquaintances or influencers from social media end up being the most reliable sources of appropriate recommendations.

The User Persona

Based on the people we interviewed, we came up with a User Persona. We will keep her in mind when coming up with the solutions to the problems we have stated above. She is the client, the target audience, the user. Putting a face and a name to the User Persona will remind us that we are designing for someone else and that their wants and needs come first.

The Opportunity

We have designed an app that connects to the user’s emails + social media and scans their network’s posts to find out where they went on a specific trip. Information gets shared and over shared daily! Millennials visit places they consider “insta-worthy“ and they are open to new experiences with the moto “do it for the gram“. The app would shorten the research time needed before each trip because it will tell you exactly what your network did, and show all the relevant pics sorted by popularity.

Once you find a hotel, restaurant, or activity you are particularly interested in, you can book it directly from the app. Once your reservation is confirmed, your schedule will be updated automatically.