Travel Genie is an all-in one vacation-planning tool. The app draws on several publically accessible data feeds/APIs from across the web and integrates them into a seamless, simple and visually cohesive user interface. Users can plan and organize their trips before they depart and manage their trips from within the app while traveling.
Interviews & Travlers' Experiences
15 travel enthusiasts around the world were interviewed. These interviewees travel frequently and make their own travel plans.
“It is a complicated process. I use Excel for all textual data but things like photos and videos cannot easily be integrated with Excel. I print out important info and bring these documents with me. One time my bag got stolen while traveling, and I lost all the printout travel documents.” — Ming, 28, Project Manager, Backpacker, Hong Kong
“I don’t like to join organized tours, and I prefer to plan everything in advance by myself, even though it is VERY time-consuming… Also, I feel anxious if I can’t check my travel plan whenever I want.” — Kimberly, 27, Lawyer, Traveler, San Francisco
“What is the tool that I use to manage documents and schedules? My brain! Any other better ways?”— Rokey, 31, Engineer, Solo Traveler, London
"Looking for trip ideas? I use Google, Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet, and Pinterest. Yeh. I know. Lots of them."— Amin, 32, Technology Evangelist, Traveling worldwide couple times a year, Berlin
Problem Tree Analysis
Design Goals
1. Engage the user and spark his or her curiosity about foreign places and cultures
2. Offer a smooth and seamless experience for organizing foreign trips
3. Provide a search engine that integrates data feeds (APIs) from major travel websites
4. Provide a calendaring tool and notification system that visually presents the user’s travel
itinerary and relevant information like local time and weather
5. Provide a visually compelling list of upcoming trips
6. Store the user’s data across platforms locally and on the cloud
Work Flow
Key Features
Each time a user logs into Travel Genie the app, greets her with fresh, high-quality images of her destinations that it has pulled from the web. The destination-based image generator is story-telling tool that helps the user build excitement about her pending trip, and sparks her curiosity to learn more about the places she visits.
When the user adds a new destination, Travel Genie dynamically adjusts the screen layout to accommodate for the new background image.
The app draws on several publically accessible data feeds/APIs from across the web and integrates them into a seamless, simple and visually cohesive planning experience.
Upon arriving at her destination, the user is greeted with relevant info like local time and weather, suggestions for places to visit; and her daily itinerary. The app also pings her with a reminder now and then to keep her on schedule :-)
Prototype
https://invis.io/U33TEO27M