Website design & content © 2019 Rachel Matthews
In the initial tests of the old itinerary, 65% of travelers did not understand why a specific recommendation or hotel appeared on their itinerary. This improved slightly during usability tests of the new Itinerary MVP, but there was still an opportunity to add clarity and build trust with our users.
The most important way we addressed this was to build the Trip Planner page, which gave the user a critical exploration step before opting to generate an itinerary. This way, the user is already familiar with their top recommendations, because those are the items listed highest in the sort order.
We highlighted favoriting functionality creating a Your Favorites section of the page, so that a user's favorite items were all in one place. We added a Favorites CTA next to the Create Itinerary button. We made the heart prominent on each Item Card, and used the same Item Card component on both the Trip Planner and Itinerary pages to keep the user experience consistent. This ensured the user could easily identify their favorites. Finally, on the itinerary page, we added heart annotations to each day tab where favorites were scheduled, so the user could easily find their favorite items.
We highlighted favoriting functionality creating a Your Favorites section of the page, so that a user's favorite items were all in one place. We added a Favorites CTA next to the Create Itinerary button. We made the heart prominent on each Item Card, and used the same Item Card component on both the Trip Planner and Itinerary pages to keep the user experience consistent. This ensured the user could easily identify their favorites. Finally, on the itinerary page, we added heart annotations to each day tab where favorites were scheduled, so the user could easily find their favorite items.
Because our research indicated photos are an important factor in the trip inspiration & planning process, the Trip Planner was designed to be image-driven. In order to maintain consistent elements across the entire platform, it made sense that we would similarly adapt the itinerary item cards as a photo-forward design.
We reused the Item Card design from new Trip Planner, and added Category Icon Badges and a remove function. Not only did this help us maintain a consistent user experience, it also saved engineering time.
Because giving the user control over their itinerary was paramount, we knew drag and drop functionality was essential. To help the user optimize their schedule, we added context indicators to the drop zones—indicating whether this was a good or bad timeslot in which to move/add the item.
We could hardly contain our grins when in the very first usability test after the drag & drop feature was added, the unprompted user, moved an item from a morning to an afternoon slot and seemed satisfied with the day's schedule.