This is a team project which involved brainstorming and design thinking, problem solving, research, design phases and interaction design. After talking and asking questions to our peers and friends regarding their travel packing experience, we realized that their basic problem is to get things packed under the airline constraints and that makes them anxious. This application will help these travelers pack their luggage bags efficiently and thus experience a hassle free packing session. This is a technology driven app which will include augmented reality to support the features of the application
September'19 - Present
User Experience, Interaction, Visual Design, Prototyping & Testing.
To create a hassle free packing experience and reduce the stress
involved due to the weight allowance for travelers.
The main problem faced by many travelers is overpacking and unorganized way of packing items in their check-in and cabin bags. On the contrary there are a group of people who are really very well organized and weigh their bags at the end as their estimates are not off the mark. The main challenge here was to help people those who struggle while packing their bags and end up getting anxious about packing.
Augmented Reality Based App
A customized application which could sync the google flights and thus help users in creating a packing list and further guide them while packing their bag according to the list of items.
The main goal was to research about the pattern of packing, understand the goals, their packing process/ideas and improve the packing list process and make it more clear and organized. Thus, understanding the pain points of the users and how efficient packing experience can be in order to deliver a desirable solution.
Helping users to organize their luggage and thus reduce their anxiety about weight allowance.
Packing techniques and ideas in order to set the parameter and understand their behavior and psychological patterns.
Helping users create a list that would lead to an organized way of packing their bags and not forgetting anything behind.
We conducted 20 interviews to understand the thought process behind planning and packing the luggage bags and got to know about how they react to this situation. This helped us in exploring some new problems and understand the issues they face before packing their bags for their trips.
As we began the research, we found that there are many competitors in the market who dedicatedly have applications only for creating a packing list based on the weather. We then also took this into consideration that creating the packing list is the most crucial part of the packing process.
We also found statistical data in which they represent how user feel stressed about pre-vacation packing. In which we found that the percentage about packing related stress is more inclined towards females and males comparatively have less certainty of getting stressed.
We then started mapping user journeys and thus creating an empathy map which would help in deeper understanding of our users behavioral patterns and identify the desired experience.
Based on the research we created personas who best represent the problems faced by our users.
We did brainstorming session which included story boarding and white boarding session to understand more about the user psychology and then we could draw an empathy map to understand about their moods, feelings and experiences based on our findings.
We decided to have a discussion with our peers who have computer science background to get this use case working and we again did some brainstorming regarding latest technologies that can be incorporated.
Key findings were as follows:
- Computer vision and image processing together will identify the type of bag the user is using.
- Machine learning and AI will help by giving the density of the items once you start scanning each item before placing into the bag.
- Augmented reality will help in guiding the user while packing the bag by placing their phone over the bag. It will guide the user with each layer at a time starting from the bottom of the bag.
We started with brainstorming ideas and journey mapping, app functionality and user flows. Drawing some basic screens based on our flows gave us a better idea of the functionality of the app as we wanted to explore more options in order to create a desirable experience.
Then we moved to low fidelity and medium fidelity prototypes. We chose a task and started plotting the action points. This helped us in defining the user experience by iterating the same process to achieve the desired goal.
We designed medium fidelity screens in order to carry out evaluations and informal walkthroughs.
We conducted walkthroughs with our prototypes. The evaluators were AAU graduate students and our peers. We carried out this walkthrough by printing the screens and allowing user to interact and give their feedback. All the walkthroughs were helpful as they gave some valuable feedbacks and scope for exploring in terms of user experience.
We tested the user flow where the user starts creating a new trip. Then the user selects the flight and the bag that he will be carrying and therefore creates a list of items to be packed and starts packing.
Defining Colors, Typography And Illustrations
After testing session and informal walkthrough we designed the high fidelity screens. Below is the first user flow where the user signs up as a first time user and creates a packing list for his travel to Seattle.
Below is a quick video walk through of our main user flow where the user packs his bag using the AR feature.
We did lot of iterations in terms of colors, layouts which would be more appealing to the users. Usability testing helped us a lot in identifying the users focus and their journey. We got lot of insights from our peers by carrying out informal walkthroughs with them. However I have always believed in testing, thus test and test till you get the best. Below are some improvements and transformations.
After interviewing the target audience at various situations I could identify that the people stress over packing and tend to have an anxiety about packing. This user research coupled with my Market research definitively concluded that travelers and users needed an application which would be a one stop destination to complete their pre vacation or trip chores. This project helped in various aspects such as documentation of the user research and the market research. Learning about new technologies and understanding how technology can help solve real world problems.
Flounder