Case study: in the shoes of a backpacker traveling to the Taj Mahal

An experiment with Sky Scanner

In the middle of a pandemic, our travel opportunities are strongly restricted.
To satisfy our wanderlust, I suggest jumping in the shoes of a backpack traveler who wants to visit the Taj Mahal.

This is a challenge that is part of the UX/UI Bootcamp prework in IronHack.
We are asked to choose for the destination one of the seven Wonders. We will make a case study on a travel app, and see how we could change it to make it more intuitive.

Visiting the Taj Mahal

The famous Taj Mahal, Image by Hans from Pixabay

The famous Taj Mahal. A white marble mausoleum situated in the North of India, commissioned in the 17th century by the emperor Shah Jahan for his beloved deceased wife, Mumtaz Mahal. This architectural gem is a symbol of eternal love and is the most visited place in India. To the displeasure of the Hindu nationalists, who officially decided to remove it from the guide of the state of Uttar Pradesh, because the building was built by a Mughal emperor, therefore a Muslim. This fact does not stop the herd of visitors from showing up, on an average of 40.000 on an everyday basis!

Image by Jörg Peter from Pixabay

The Taj Mahal is situated in Agra, a polluted city in the North of India. Although visiting the Taj Mahal is definitely worth a trip, there is not much more to visit in Agra, except for the Red Fort, the “Baby Taj”, and the nearby city Fatehpur Sikri.

Everyday life costs in India for a backpacker

India is one of the cheapest travel destinations in the world. One can find a decent room for less than 4€ a night in guest houses. Be ready to have bucket showers, though. To get the best price, booking accommodations on the internet should be avoided. The prices are usually higher, and there is no place for negotiation.
Regarding the food budget, it is possible to eat vegetarian traditional thalis, street food or fruit, for less than a euro. The expensive Western restaurants have to be avoided.
Good to know: a local SIM card with high-speed 4G is around 3€ a month. This will give access to the local transportation apps and will allow saving money during the trip.

Overall, the biggest expense for our backpacker is transportation. To this extend, expensive domestic flights would be prohibited. The user would prefer booking a seat on local trains or buses.

So here is a recap of the price that our thrifty backpacker should consider for a trip to India:

• Food: 2,50€ — 5,50€ per day in local restaurants
• Housing: 3,50€ — 7,50€ per night in a family guesthouse
• Transportation: 1€ — 3€ for long-ride buses. Between 8 and 30€ for a train ride. Some trains literally cross the country, so again: the price will depend on the trip's duration.

An overview of a local bus station in the countryside in North India. Shot made with my smartphone in February 2020

One thing to keep in mind: spending time in touristic cities, like Agra, is more expensive: between 6€ and 11€ for a room, for example.
The entry fees for foreigners to the Taj Mahal is 1100₹, with an extra 200₹ to access the mausoleum, a total of 15 €, a high price for India.

Creating a Persona: keep it real!

Before going further, let’s create a persona for our case study.
Creating a persona is an empathic step in UX/UI design. It helps the team to personify the users and keep their needs in focus.

For this case study, my persona will be Thomas, a French backpacker of 32 years old.

Meet Thomas, the very first persona of my creation. He looks pretty cool, right?

Thomas is a solo traveler who wants to stay in India as long as possible, with a 4.000€ budget. Once the budget is over, the trip will end. That means that he has to be thrifty all way long to make the stay lasts as long as possible. Comfort is not a requirement; the priority is to arrive at the Taj Mahal at the cheapest rate. Thomas is flexible on the flight dates, and he will take a one-way ticket.

Benchmarking three travel apps

Now that we have our persona and a clear vision of his intentions let’s choose the app we are going to study.
I first benchmarked three flight metasearch apps: Hopper, Kayak, and Skyscanner. I used Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics for User Interface Design, and here is a spreadsheet below.

The one who passed the test better is Skyscanner.
Here are some extra notes I took during my tests.

Hopper

Hopper is intuitive to use, and the lowest prices are visible at a glance. There is the possibility of freezing the price for a fee, watching the trip's price, or sharing the information on the trip with a travel buddy. These are helpful features!
Also, I noticed meager accommodation prices, like a 2€ room in Delhi. I even saw rooms for 0€. How is this even possible?
One thing bugged me, though: the visual design choices. The hearts and bunnies are too childish for my backpackers’ audience.

Kayak

First impression: the design is sober, serious, and totally appropriate.
Something inconvenient for my backpacker audience: the price range is not available on the calendar.
I also found it hard to navigate. When a deal was selected, a pop-up keeps opening, and the user is stuck in a loop.

Skyscanner

Skyscanner is the most convincing of the 3 apps:

• The design is clear and minimalist,
• There is a detailed Covid map with the travel restrictions and the evolution of the pandemic in each country. That’s the only app offering this feature, and it’s a big plus for every traveler.
  Our poor Thomas would see that he is not going to fly to India anytime soon. Tourist entry is prohibited, and the Indian government delivers no tourist visas since March 2020.
• The possibility to save the flight for later and to compare the other flights
• The possibility to track the flight
• There is an indication to show the flights which emit less Co2.

For all these reasons, I chose to focus my case study on Skyscanner. Now that we chose our app let’s determine how we could make an even better version.
I am going to run a couple of interviews with test users and see what happens.

The interviews: make it fun!

For the test, I am going to use the Android version of the app. I noticed that the user interactions and the features differ from Android and iOS.

Since we are currently under hard lockdown in Germany, I led all my interviews remotely with Zoom. That was actually convenient since it is possible to share the screen and record the conversation in a video format.
It allowed me to focus on the social interaction during the interview. Once the interviews were done, I watched it again to observe how the user’s actions.

When I started the interview, I took some time to explain the scenario to my interviewee, with many details and passion, like in a role-playing game.
I wanted my users to feel emotionally engaged and to have fun with the whole process. In a nutshell: to create the excitation of booking a flight for a trip.

Then, I applied the “5-second test”. I displayed the home page for 5 seconds and asked the user about what they saw. The idea is to verify if the home page is understandable at a glance. And it was the case: 100% of my interviewees understand that this app would help find a flight.

I explained to my interviewees Thomas’s objective: finding a way to go to the Taj Mahal at the cheapest rate to keep as much money as possible for the rest of the trip.
It was not as smooth as I imagined.

In the animation above, you can see the recording of a user who wants to find the cheapest flight possible.
Before the user entered any data on the second screen, some options are already set by default: the departure, the date, etc.
But this step is not really necessary. The user should be empowered, and be first asked about the criteria before showing any results.
I also noticed that, by default, a return flight is booked.
It took the test users a bit of time to book a one-way flight instead (double tap on the selected date).
Another thing I noticed during my interviews: the user had a hard time accessing the lowest price.

While leading my interviews with my test users, I identified these counter-intuitive elements in the app:

• If the backpacker types directly ‘Taj Mahal’ in the search bar, no result will appear. The user would need to get out of the app and research a search engine.
• The interface is not intuitive to find the lowest price
• On the home page, when the user types on the plane icon, there is immediately a random result, with information the user never entered. I will completely redesign this screen because it’s a step that is not currently relevant.
• Not intuitive to set a one-way flight
• The filters research could appear in an earlier stage
• There is no link with local bus companies or any information on how the railroad service works locally. I intend to add a button that would give the link to all the local companies and the way to travels in India.

Ok, now, here a prototype that would solve some of these pain points.

The prototype

I will set up a wireframe that will answer all the listed pain points and add more flexibility on the date and departure/arrival city.

Here is my Lo-Fi prototype, with my implementations:

• I completely changed the second screen. Instead, I put a research page with all the filters and criteria available. One filter that I would also add is the number of checked-in luggage. This fee is expensive, and it’s good to see the “real price” as soon as possible in the research.
• When the user is asked to enter a date, offer the possibility ‘Cheapest Month’, just like the website’s feature, and also “Cheapest destination” for the destination should be suggested.
• On the calendar, I would display the flight under every date, so the user can have an idea of the prices at a glance. I would also highlight the day of which count the cheapest rate.
• the recap of the flight once the flight is selected, with all the connection information and the duration of the connection
• On the “Booking page”, a button links local traveling information: bus companies, train stations, apps to download, etc.

Overall, I noticed that for this case study, all my interviewees would only book their flights. All the steps afterward would be done once in the country, in a more spontaneous way. Going to the train station or bus station, and catch the cheapest one who travels to Agra.
And once in the city, asking around for cheap accommodations.
That sounds definitely like a backpacker vibe, for sure.