Helping a travel start-up move their personalised itinerary services from Messenger to their own product

I would like to express my gratitude to Ethoventures for agreeing to share information for the creation of this case study. The information and insights presented in this portfolio case study have been shared with the consent and approval of Ethoventures.

“Users have to take a 25 question long personality test on Messenger to discover their travel personality and get an itinerary, every time they travel”

-Client

Problem statement

Users abandon the travel personality questionnaire on Ethoventures after a few questions. This is a problem because this questionnaire allows users to get their personalised itinerary which is the sole feature Ethoventures and the only way to get an itinerary using their services.

Objective

Finding out why users abandon the process so early and creating a process that matches their needs so that they can reach their goal and have a travel itinerary that matches their needs and personality.

Role

I led all the design activities as UX designer/project lead.

Client

Ethoventures

Duration

5 weeks

Team

1 UX designer (me), 2 UI designers, 1 PM, 5 developers.

Process and timeline

What is Ethoventures?

Ethoventures is a company that originally started and grew on social media.

Their goal is to help users find their travel identity through a questionnaire and then create personality-based itineraries. What sets Ethoventures apart is their ability to curate tailored itineraries for groups, aligning bespoke experiences with the distinct personalities of each group member.

The company did not have a website when we started on the project, all their services were social media based.

Challenge

Ethoventures’ goal was to improve the overall user experience when taking the travel personality quiz.

⚡️ Business insight #1

The current travel quiz was too long (over 25 questions long) which caused confusion about what steps were needed to get the itinerary, leading many users to give up the process.

⚡️ Business insight #2

The platform did not remember users’ personality quiz results meaning they had to complete the quiz every time, creating a frustrating experience for users.

⚡️ Business insight #3

Users were unable to quickly and easily purchase a travel itinerary. It’s important to remember users’ quiz results so when they return to the platform, they can buy itineraries for any destination or make plans for specific timeframes.

The unique selling point of Ethoventures is personalised itineraries that users get after answering a questionnaire. At the time, all the questionnaires were done through Messenger.

Here are examples of Messenger questions users had to go through to discover their travel personality and purchase an itinerary:

Current experience

Learning about user behaviours

I decided to conduct a more thorough stakeholder interview to find out about user feedback and current behaviours especially when answering the questionnaire. I also decided to test the current questionnaire with 5 participants who had never used Ethoventures before.

Evaluative research

💬 User quotes:

  • “Oh, it’s on Messenger…Going through Messenger feels weird, I don’t feel like I can trust it as much as a website”

  • “21 questions? And I’d have to do that every time? That’s so long!”

  • “They said 21 questions and then I have to answer more now?!”

  • “Argggh that’s so many questions, I don’t even know how many I have left!”

  • “The questions are so long, I have to scroll down to see all the answers”

Persona creation

After analysing the data from the usability tests and from the stakeholder interview, I managed to see 3 key users, which I translated into 3 personas. Here is the persona I used in this particular case:

Journey mapping

I then created a user journey map of the current experience to empathise with the user, highlight the pain points such as the length of the test, and find potential opportunities. This also helped me show to the clients what and where were the pain points and what the solutions could be.

Opportunities:

  • Having the questionnaire on a website that feels more professional and trustworthy

  • A shorter, more efficient process to find out about travel personalities with progress indicators to increase transparency

  • Showing the value of a tailored itinerary

  • Making the user excited about the opportunities and making them feel like they are travelling already

  • Short, concise and efficient questions and answers

  • A personality results page with travel recommendations

Inspiration and best practices

Goals:

  • Understanding the best practices to design a questionnaire/test.

  • Discovering ways to design questionnaires/tests on mobile and making it a key part of the experience.

  • Understanding the needs and pain points of users when using questionnaires.

Part of my research looking at design inspiration. I wanted to analyse different types questionnaire designs and interactions and decided to look at 5 indirect competitors and looked at both mobile and desktop designs.

Opportunities:

  • Allowing users to go back to their answer and to change their answer.

  • Having in depth results as those results are going to impact the rest of the user experience

  • Having one question per screen to reduce cognitive load

  • Displaying a clear progress indicator during the process

Generating ideas to solve Tom’s problems

How might we?

How might we reduce the length of the questionnaire?

How might we make Tom excited to take the test?

How might we keep Tom’s attention during the questionnaire?

How might we make Tom feel excited about discovering the type of traveler they are?

How might we show the value of personal recommendations and itineraries?

How might we keep the cognitive load to a minimum during the questionnaire, whilst minimising the number of steps between questions?

Discussing ideas with visuals

I invited the team and client to discuss the sign-up and questionnaire flows. As the client had a few requests and ideas, I created journey maps during meetings to see how certain solutions could impact users in their journey, it also helped highlight potential challenges in terms of experience.

User flow

After being able to see what the challenges in the new experience could be, I was able to create a user flow showing Tom’s path when taking the test and signing up.

In parallel, I also worked on different flows and features for the website, and created a workflow for the entire website that was reviewed and iterated several times with the team and client to make sure the journey of the users would be as smooth and friction free as possible.

Sketches

Prototyping

Visual design exploration

Important: The designs in this case study are my own. I didn’t get to work on the UI side of the project at the time and wanted to showcase my UI skills as well as my UX skills in this case study so I took the initiative of redesigning the interface whilst still following my original UX research.

Mid-fildelity designs

Final designs

A new experience on a new website

User problem

Users feel like they can’t trust a service using Messenger as much as a service provided by a company with a website.

Solution

The creation of a user friendly company website that makes the process clear and transparent.

An optimised experience

User problems

1.The questionnaire is too long (21 questions, 7 minutes to answer, + additional questions at the end).

2. Users can’t save their personality quiz results, meaning that they have to take the entire 21 question-quiz every time they use this service.

Solutions

1. The new experience consists of a personality test with 5 questions that users only need to complete once and a travel test with 5-7 questions that users complete when they travel.

2. Users can create an account and their personality quiz results are saved and used to create all future itineraries.

Visible progress indicators

User problem

1. The user has no way of knowing how far along they are in the questionnaire once they’ve started.

2.The questions and answers are too long, and users need to scroll up and down to choose their answer, which makes the quiz seem even longer.

Solutions

1. Progress bars give users a sense of how much they have completed and how many questions they have left.

2. Questions and answers are short and above the fold and easy to read and understand.

👋🏻 You can also test the prototype on Figma

The team and I managed to create an MVP during the 5 weeks of the project. We are going to continue improving the product in the coming months as the client would like to keep working with us to develop their product further.

📚 Learnings

  • Leading the UX side of a project, selecting the deliverables with deadlines in mind and prioritising them.

  • Collaborating with UI designers. I was used to doing both UX and UI during projects, it was the first time I collaborated with designers specialised in UI.

  • Leading stakeholder and client meetings and presenting design decisions. Although it is something that I have done before I felt much more confident leading the meetings.