Travel VR
Preview immersive experience of luxury hotels and destinations before booking.
Photo Shoot From Travel VR Exhibition
Team Member
Coco Xu, Qian Zhang, Wen Zhang, VR Studio
My Role
UX/UI Designer, Visual Designer
Duration
8 months
Accomplishments
Created 1st ever B2C VR app experience for travel in China, allowing users to preview real luxury hotels and attractions.
New product helped increase users adoption by 20%.
Our accelerated user growth helped attract $11M in investment from Tencent Inc.
Preview Solution
CHALLENGE
How Might We Let Users Gain Real Experience When Planning Trips.
Planning a trip is a complicated and tedious mission. Most people have to rely on online information to make decisions and reservations for destinations and hotels. However, people experience disappointment during the journey by trusting this information. We intend to solve the problem by providing a platform narrowing the gap between expectation and reality. Our goal is to improve our customers’ travel experience.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
Understand The Root Of The Problem
We conducted research online to figure out what reasons cause a big gap between expectations based on online information and the reality experience from tourists.
Unreliable Online Description
95% of tourists feel ads about hotels or scenic spots are not realistic.
Customers cannot get detailed information about hotel reservations they made, and the customer service response is slow.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison
Online comments about travel and journey blogs are highly affected by different personal feelings.
Different people have different tastes and lifestyles. What some people think is enjoyable might be boring for others.
PRIMARY RESEARCH
We carried out interview sessions with 15 users. Among them were 5 hotel managers and 10 users who frequently travel for the holidays and use the online hotel or ticket booking platform. Based on the information, we created personas.
Percentage of complaints about hotel and tourist attraction booking platform in China
Why Do Customers Complain About Current Products?
We analyzed existing platforms and users’ feedback in order to understand what are the common features and why they are inefficient.
All these travel apps are heavily dependent on traveler journals’ and photos that taken by photographers.
The ratings and comments for the hotels and hot spots from different users are primary criteria for recommendations to people.
Common products in China market
Synthesis
We then synthesized the findings together with the research insights from primary, secondary and competitor analysis, and we concluded the possible opportunities for improvements.
Current system
Proposed system
Design Solution
Compared to the current system and proposed system, we determined that the critical point for improving customers trip experience is to provide first hand and objective information before making decisions.
Brainstorming& Mapping features
We brainstormed together according to the user’s behaviors, problems we concluded, and mapping patterns.
Information Architecture
After designing key functions, we created an Information Architecture to show the structure of the entire application.
Wireframing
We designed the wireframes based on the patterns and requirements we found from users.
Common products in China market
Design Change - 1
We recruited some users to test our low-fidelity interface design. We prioritized tasks and found that many users didn’t know it was a VR app until we gave them a detailed description. So, we decided to present the 360 degrees VR video in the “On boarding Page”, which previously were static background pictures.
Design Change - 2
Another design change was about “VR Video Page”. We adjusted the function because some of our customers were near-sighted. They needed to take off their glasses when they were wearing a Cardboard to experience VR Video. “Zoom In” and “Zoom Out” are necessary features for them.
Interface Design
We designed the final UI for the first version.
App Icon Design Process
We got inspiration from hummingbirds. Hummingbirds fly around the world, which can represent the company’s travel culture and mission. Their colorful feathers represent our customers’ mood during traveling.
Sketch and final icon design
VR Shooting Process
Due to funding and time limits, we conducted research and our team planned to take VR video in the most popular hotels and destinations from our current customers.
Bangkok, Thailand
The device used for shooting under the sea level
Capture the details in the luxury hotel
Result From User Testing
After the app was launched on the app store, we found users from different age groups to conduct usability tests, to design a better experience for the second product version.
We found that 85% of users hoped to add a direct link for booking hotels in the app.
VR Offline Exhibition
We got excellent popularity after the app shipped. Our creative director decided to hold an offline VR exhibition for attracting more potential customers.
Shang Hai
Shang Hai
Shang Hai
Cardboard
We also designed cardboard and provided them with customers who didn’t have a VR headset, which let them enjoy the immersive travel experience anywhere from their phones.