Virtual Tour Guide
The app will help travelers to receive reliable information about historical places, museum tours, and heritage sites without the need of a human being guide who is limited to a specific time and language. In addition, the app can assist travelers to plan a trip.
The Problem
Imagine you arrive at an amazing historical place; you paid a lot of money for the opportunity to visit it but you can't really understand what happened in this place, or worst – you pass right through it, but you didn't know that something amazing was hiding next to you. Why? Because the place doesn't contain signs and we don't want or can't join a guided tour.
Business Model
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Selling attraction's tickets
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On-line guide – extra service
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Promotions
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Collaborations with museums and heritage sites
Research
Market Research:
First, I deepened my knowledge on the market. I found a few popular apps, Facebook groups and websites used by travelers. I searched the activities and the content in each platform. I found out that most of the popular travel apps today are providing recommendations about popular places to visit, but not focusing on guidance. In that point I started the users research so that I could understand better the user's needs and mode of use.
Users Research:
The purpose of the user's research was to understand what travelers think about guided tours, how they plan their trips, what kind of information they collect and how they use the information they collected.
To get to know the users better, I created a questionnaire, which was answered by 54 people. After analyzing the answers, I conducted interviews with 3 users to specify the needs of the users, and the personas.
I figured three main conclusions from the study:
1. The most popular platform for research before the trip is in google – mostly in travel journeys and travel sites. One more popular tool is Facebook – people are using other traveler's recommendations in dedicated Facebook groups. Most of them don't use apps to plan their trips.
3. Most people plan their trip in advance or collect a bank of options.
2. Most of the information is collected prior to the trip and kept in a notebook/ notes app/saved places at google map.
In addition to these conclusions, from the interviews I also understood that I should help users to plan a trip and then allow them to read information about the locations they chose to visit / save.
But that created a challenge.
I need to take into consideration two different points of time in which the user may use of this application
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Future – the user plans a trip he plans to be in. He collects information for his trip.
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Present – the user is now on the trip, he wants to see the plan, look for more options if he wants to change his plans and read about the places he is in.
Personas
Amit Nevo - 25, recently finished his military service
Dafna Binyamin - 41, Information systems engineer
I decided to focus on Amit because he represents a big population which travel to far countries without the ability to explore the place without a guide.
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"This trip is once in a lifetime; I want to create memories that I will never forget”
Amit Nevo
25 years old
Living with his parents in Kibbutz Dafna
Work as a travel's security man
Amit finished his military service three month ago. He works as a travel security man and saves money for his trip to south America. In this job he combines between his passion for travels and his goal to save money. Amit plans to travel with his friends from the army. They plan to travel in many countries, to hike and not follow “the regular Israeli path”.
Concerns:
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Amit knows that Israeli travelers travel in the same places. He worries that he will not discover other places which worth to know.
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Missing important sites because itinerary changes.
Needs:
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Mark places in the map while reading about them, so he will remember to visit them.
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Receiving information about trails that need to book in advance.
Information Architecture
Flowchart
The main flow of the prototype shows the process the user goes through when he is planning a trip.
As Amit, I want to receive a sketched itinerary of my trip according to the destinations I have saved so, I could use it in my trip.
Concepts
The user fills in the trip details and sets settings
The user chooses location and interests point for his trip
The user can view and edit the plan for his trip. He can choose a list of option view or detailed view.