UGO
A mobile platform for gamified travel blogging and events.
Product manager, UX designer, researcher, full stack developer and lead marketer leading the design, research and development of the dedicated mobile app from conception to delivery.
My Role
Conducting daily standups, interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, iterating on designs, determining information architecture, frontend and backend development for native iOS and Android apps, reaching out and building partnerships with strategic partners.
Responsibilities
Travel enthusiasts, fandoms, international and small communities, brands, PR agencies, online content producers.
Target Audience
Background
UGO is a platform for gamified travel blogging. Through UGO, users can connect with their community and find new communities.
UGO allows users to :
Tell a story through an experience. Unlike a blog or vlog, don’t write or show something, let people live it.
Get moving. Experiences motivate users to spend time outside and get active in order to participate in storylines.
Reality or fantasy. Users can join realistic experiences such as themed tours of a city or fictional experiences such as explorations of fictional lands that correspond to real world locations.
Share experiences or marks that tell a story, give rewards or teach a skill like how to help the environment, build communities, schedule events, support a cause, etc.
Problem
Travelers seek adventure, now more than ever. However, authentic content is difficult to distinguish from heavily edited influencer content. With the rise of experience travel, travelers need a way to easily search, filter, review and book experiences. Through the abundance of noise and content on various social media platforms, users lack a tangible connection with the places, items, storylines and people they interact with behind their screens. Given the increased rate of mental health problems and suicides due to isolation, people are in need of ways to form genuine connections with the world and people around them.
User Research
To begin the design process, I conducted user interviews and used the data to build empathy maps and personas. The main user group proved to be expansive since families, college students, corporations, couples, and friends from various age groups expressed interest in finding unique experiences before booking a trip. Finding unique places and activities, sharing experiences and meeting new people, as well as cost was brought up by members of each demographic. From these results, I began making a list of features and problem/solution statements to solve issues brought up during the interviews. To test these ideas, I prepared a 15 question survey with 10 multiple choice and 5 open ended questions to determine what actions and features users value most in travel and experiences. I used these results to define the four critical user pain points and decide upon the essential features for the lo-fi prototype.
User Pain Points
1
Experiences often sound fun, but can lead to disappointment since it’s difficult to determine the quality of the experiences/locations before experiencing it personally.
Disappointment
2
It is hard to search for experiences or locations without knowledge of them, leaving experiences and locations under the radar for some.
Inspiration
3
Adventures are more enjoyable with a group. Whether it’s experiencing a group activity or sharing the excitement with others, users want to connect with others virtually in a story like adventure.
Connection
4
Trips and experiences are often expensive, users need quality experiences and experience planning for affordable prices or free.
Cost
User Journey Map
Persona: Ana
Goal: Find a new adventure to join and leave a mark.
Following Ana’s user journey highlighted the importance of having a quick and easy to understand onboarding process so that users recognize the symbols when the homescreen appears.
The importance of filters for an easy search experience and linked/tagged photos for relevant experience content was also brought to light, to enhance the user experience.
It was noted that the voting feature on task photos increased trust in the quality of the experiences.
Key Challenges
Designing a system that allows users to determine the quality of an experience prior to joining.
Constructing a storage option that does not make the app bulky or become too expensive to maintain while maintaining speed and quality.
Integrating several pages while adopting a minimal and lively design.
Goal
Develop a minimal and lively platform that allows users to explore and join a variety of experiences like storylines, themed adventures, or guided tours, anywhere in the world. Focus on ensuring the quality of experiences and keeping our servers affordable and efficient.
Ideation
Before the wireframing process, I completed the HMW (How Might We) ideation exercise to find solutions to the user needs identified in interviews, personas and the user journey map.
My focus was on finding solutions to ensure the quality of experiences and maximize the options available to users to find, engage in and share unique forms of entertainment.
Low Fidelity Designs
After answering the HMWs, I had a list of features and solutions to make UGO stand out. I used these ideas to prepare paper wireframes for the initial design.
The main purpose of UGO is to serve as a form of entertainment and connection. Whether from home or across the world, users can engage in storylines, activities and experiences. In terms of design, it was difficult to incorporate several pages into the app without making it cluttered. My initial attempt required a bottom toolbar which ended up looking clunky. A hamburger menu seemed inefficient, after exhausting many options, I decided to add the pages as buttons on the home screen and incorporate other pages within their navigation.
Before moving forward, we held a review session to asses our goals and critique the functionality and experience of the analog designs. The team held a voting session to pick the features and designs to move forward with. These designs were then translated into digital wireframes in Sketch and later, Figma.
Digital wireframes were brought together to form the low fidelity prototype, which we used for our first usability study.
User Testing
Study Type
Unmoderated usability study
Location
Global, remote
Participants
5
Length
30-60 minutes
I conducted two rounds of usability studies. The first was done with a low-fidelity prototype and helped build the base for the mockup designs. The second study was conducted with the first iteration of the high-fidelity prototype.
Findings
Round 1 Findings
Photo sharing across experiences and activity tags. Users expressed interest in completing an activity at a location from an experience and wanting to share the moment under the activity tag and experience task.
A separate category of live events / storylines where all followers of an experience participate in the same tasks simultaneously.
Round 2 Findings
React to marks. Users expressed that they wanted to thank someone for a gift, laugh at a funny photo or video, etc.
Notifications about new marks by people and brands users follow.
High Fidelity Designs
Notifications, both in app and offline, were incorporated into the UX to allow users to receive updates from friends and brands they follow and find out when they are in a hotspot.
The different types of marks in UGO, storylines, stickers, gifts, videos & photos, and events.
Users can find marks at their location or by searching and tapping on a map to find a location’s coordinates.
Continue an experience from the homescreen through the UGO icon.
Explore profiles and follow friends or brands to receive updates of experiences they share or marks they leave.
Easily search for content by name or context.
Maps allow users to explore real fictional storylines by connecting fantasy locations with real world landmarks that advance a story.
Branding
I chose bright, vivid and summer inspired colors for UGO in order to awaken a sense of adventure and excitement. The “O” logo is similar to a hand drawn roadmap connecting two locations.
Accessibility Considerations
All colors follow WCAG standards.
The platform is available in multiple languages.
Clear labels and navigation for screen readers.
Impact
90% of beta testers used UGO to search for events and places at locations they were going to travel to. 85% of beta testers tested UGO in airports or before booking a trip to a new location. All beta testers left marks at locations outside of their physical location and viewed others’ marks.
“I’m going to Singapore for New Years, but I’ve never been there before. I was worried I would miss out on the local experience, but now I can find out about all of the events in the city and where everyone is going.” - Anonymous user
What I Learned
The major design challenge I faced with UGO was organizing its navigation. Since the platform allows for multiple activity types, there are several independent pages that require their own navigation. The first designs were tricky to understand for new users since they were only icons and text made them look bulky. As a result, I focused on gestures such as long presses and swiping to reveal text and designing an easy to digest onboarding screen. This project helped me become comfortable integrating different gestures into my designs as well as how to convey information with visual cues and minimal text.
Tools used: Sketch, Figma
Thank You
Thank you for your interest in my work on UGO. For more details or questions on the project or to get in touch regarding your own project, please feel free to contact me using the link below.