Getaways — a vacation app for a post COVID-19 world
By: Kwek Yao Wei
Tags: Mobile, Vacations, UX, UI, Singapore

I started Getaways, my first ever UX project, as part of the UXPM programme by Nanyang Technological University. “Great,” you think, rolling your eyes. Here’s another UX bootcamper who thinks a six-month course is going to turn him into Don Norman.

Well, I’m no UX pro. But I like to think that I have the collaborative, never-say-die mindset of so many great UXers. And on the plus side, I had a great team:

Iris Lee, a marketer with a keen eye and a critical mind

Rashidah Lim, an outdoor adventure specialist with travel industry experience

Rosemarry Ng, a visual designer with a strong aesthetic sense

Laura Tang Leteri, a jiu-jitsu instructor with a global mindset

Kwek Yao Wei (that’s me!), a content writer with strong people skills

So when we were tasked with creating a travel app, we felt confident. Though our SWOT analysis revealed some weaknesses, there were pretty good opportunities too.

Strengths

Creative freedom

Home-grown branding

Weaknesses

Limited budget

No partner base

No user base

Opportunities

Increased demand

Gaps in existing solutions

Threats

Rapidly evolving economy

Unpredictable travel restrictions

Supply may not keep up

So here’s what happened

We’re going the staycation route Making it easy for staycationers A sudden curveball — flying solo Running more research for better insights Introducing Getaways What I learnt, for now and the future

We’re going the staycation route

The elephant in the room was obvious. We were designing a travel app in the midst of a global pandemic where borders were closed, flights still grounded, and vaccines months away. By September 2020, international visitors to Singapore had dropped by 81.2%, tourism receipts by 78.4%, and gazetted hotel room revenue by 68.8%.

So we decided to build for staycations. If people couldn’t travel overseas, the least we could do was provide local experiences.

Plus, Singapore was doing well. When we started in October 2020, the nation was averaging single-digit cases; a far cry from the peak of over a thousand cases per day in April. The government had shifted to Phase 2 (part of a three-phase approach to reopening the country) and gave the green light to hotels, museums, etc. To top it off, they announced a $100 SingapoRediscovers voucher for every Singapore citizen to spend on lifestyle and tourist activities.

Supply, meet demand.

Making it easy for staycationers

We compared three popular travel apps on the market:

Klook: A travel booking platform with frequent promotions. Has multiple search and discovery methods, including nearby and top-rated lists. Users can save places of interest to a wishlist.

Tripadvisor: Online travel review platform. Has multiple search and discovery methods, including nearby and recommended lists. Trips can be saved and shared with the community.

Airbnb: Vacation rental online marketplace, recently offering online experiences as well. Simplified search method. Accommodation can be saved to lists by location.

Then we moved on to the SingapoRediscovers app. Developed by the Singapore Tourism Board, this app helped locals find participating vendors under the SingapoRediscovers initiative. We wanted to see if there were usability issues — and how we could avoid them.

Safe to say there were a lot of issues. Oof.

Next, we surveyed 26 people, interviewed 3, and conducted contextual inquiries on 5. These studies were guided by a simple question:

What’s stopping locals from doing staycations?

Using an affinity diagram, we discovered that users:

Preferred online discovery methods

Were unsure of where to go in Singapore

Wanted new, different experiences

Wanted to escape the daily grind (work, home life)

Found that planning a trip was tedious but necessary

Were attracted by images more than text

So what’s the real problem?

That research paved the way to our problem statement:

Travellers need an engaging and easy way to plan their trips as researching and planning is time-consuming and troublesome.

And then to our value proposition:

Allow leisure travellers to find, compare, and enjoy travel experiences easily.

What do our users want?

We created a persona, Kim Tan, to represent someone who’s hungry for new experiences, keen to explore Singapore, and in need of a easier way to plan vacations. To identify the pain points and opportunities, we also plotted her journey from Research to Review.

Building the first solution

After much discussion, we created our first Information Architecture (IA) based on Kim, adding key categories (as surfaced in the interviews) such as Accommodation, Food, and Activities. At one point, we floated the idea of having GPS-guided tours, and also included a Compare function to help users directly compare different options.

With the use case “Kim wants to compare new restaurants for dinner with a close friend”, we designed a simple user flow to demonstrate the process of finding and comparing a particular option, moving from sketches to high fidelity wireframes. At this point, we had come to call our app Backyard Vacays.

A sudden curveball — flying solo

The school made an announcement: all projects would henceforth be worked on individually. It was a good chance to test my skills, and an even better chance to review the work.

The research was . . . not quite there

I needed more validation on why we had been designing the way we did, so I decided to run another round of interviews, this time focusing on users’ experiences, emotions, and perceptions of travel apps.

Revamping the name and look

We had named the app Backyard Vacays, but I noticed that it wasn’t getting much traction. So I did an informal poll on Discord with a group of friends, pitting Backyard Vacays against two new names I came up with.

The results were clear: nobody liked Backyard Vacays. So I chose to go with Getaways instead. I dismissed Weekender after Deborah, a fellow classmate, noted an existing magazine with the same name in Singapore.

Running more research for better insights

The findings from my additional round of interviews were really interesting.

Users liked planning — they just found it tedious or overly complicated. And yet there were those who disliked planning but did it anyway because, well, they had to.

So it seems the problem is…

Travellers need an engaging and easy way to plan their trips as researching and planning is time-consuming and troublesome.

And I can provide value by…

Empowering travellers with a fun, easy way to discover and plan their vacations.

Introducing Getaways

I redid the persona and added one more: Benjamin Lee. This time, Kim would be an impromptu vacationer, someone who didn’t like planning but still needed a fun way to discover travel ideas. Benjamin, on the other hand, was a planner at heart, a detailed person who wanted an efficient way to build his itineraries.

From there, creating a new IA was easy. I created four sections: Browse, Trips, Quests, and Profile. Quests would be a gamified feature for users like Kim to discover new ideas while earning rewards, while Trips was an optimised way of building itineraries for users like Benjamin.

I created two use cases, one for each persona.

Use Case 1: Kim plays a quest to discover new ideas and earn points.

Use Case 2: Benjamin plans a custom trip.

What I learnt, for now and the future

This project was as full of fun as it was missteps — but that’s all in the name of good learning.

The research could have been planned better. Firstly, our research question was a little off target. We weren’t sure about what kind of app we really wanted, and it showed in our execution and results. Secondly, we should have planned for more interviews, or at least, more surveys. The data was lacking in the first dataset and that led to weakly validated insights. For my future projects, I’d like to have a clear and strong research question, as well as a plan for sufficient studies.

Other blunders weren’t as frustrating, mostly because they were meant to be iterative aspects. For example, the app’s name might change again, and that’s ok. The wireframes, mockups, and prototypes have improved at every iteration, and I certainly expect them to become more refined and user-friendly after usability tests and further iterations.

Upon product launch, the KPIs should centre on user onboarding and adoption. I would use metrics like conversion rate, churn, returning users, and new accounts — ultimately, we to build a user and partner base rapidly. Possible solutions to meet this goal include special partner deals, free trials, and developing a viral social presence.