Overview
Introduction
In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, freedom to travel has become a luxury. Van travel has become a fashionable and safe choice, and the depressed tourism industry is expected to gain new vitality. Although such a facility is provided, van removal and conversion are still difficult for some users. The project aims to develop a service or product that will allow users to solve the problems encountered when removing and converting the van.
Timeline
01. Okt. 2020 – 28. Feb. 2021
Refined in 03. 2023
My Role
I am mainly responsible for product development and production process monitoring.
Teammates
Rebecca Boeing (Graphic designer)
Maurine Worre (Communication designer)
Siqi Ren (Product designer)
Nan Wu (Visual designer)
Tools
Figma, Adobe XD, Illustrator
Project Timeline
Background
MHP: A Porsche Company is a management and IT consulting firm. MHPs digitize their clients' processes and products and support their IT transformation across the value chain.
Bully Hacks is an experiential program dedicated to supporting Van travel. We were fortunate enough to be allowed to participate in its testing program.
We need to find problems with Van-life and create a service and experience.
Billy Hacks
Problem
In 2019, Covid-19 swept the world, and people were trapped in isolation and social restrictions. Traveling freely as usual has become a luxury. But smart nomads have come up with a new way to travel:
Travel with Van.
But imagination is always better than reality. Travel with Van also faces many problems. The expensive price of RVs discourages users, and vans seem to be a much cheaper item, but people still have a long way to go to make vans realize their travel intentions.
What is the imaginary vanlife like?
But the reality is ....
Through the comparison of the two Research Walls, we found that although the imaginary Vanlife is so beautiful, users must not avoid the modification of the van if they want to start this activity. Loneliness, misery, and bad scenery seem to be subjectively changeable by users, but the weakness of manual work is indeed insurmountable. The reality is so cruel that users cannot start this wonderful new journey.
So we found the problem.
Refit and Retrofit a Van for Travel
Approach
Traveling with a van is not a recent phenomenon. As far back as the '60s, people were transforming full-sized vans to be personal living spaces one can take from spot to beautiful spot.
In order to learn more about this mysterious way of travel, we contacted some influencers who use hot words such as #vanlife #Vantravel through Instgram, and obtained the resources and ways of their modification through Q&A.
(Chat transcripts have been organized, condensed and translated for readability.)
For comparison, I have also collected some interviews with interested people.
“Budget is a huge issue and I can't start without knowing the approximate cost.”
“Modifying a car is too complicated and finding resources is time consuming, so I've been putting plans on hold.”
“As an influencer, I just want to spread the word about new ways to travel, I don't want to deal with the hassle.”
“I'm a handcraft green bird and I need someone or something to help me, even if it's a guidebook.”
From the above interviews, we can conclude that not all users have manual skills, and a considerable number of users also need to seek help from others.
Traveling with a van seems to have formed an inherent circle. Users who have entered this circle enjoy the happiness it brings, while users who have not yet entered encounter many obstacles. In order to expand the circle of Vanlife, how can we build a bridge of communication between new and old users?
Therefore the HMW Question of this project was raised.
How might we build a service to connect two groups of users
to refit and retrofit a van for travel?
Research
Interviews
In order to better understand the impact of the information gap between interested and regular users of Vanlife, I advocate conducting user interviews before delving into inspirations. I also invited our product managers to join us for an affinity mapping session so we could, as a team, brainstorm solutions based on our findings.
We interviewed more than 30 users who are willing to try various forms of travel, and 23 of them are interested in Vanlife. We found that:
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Even users who think they have some skills in handicraft industry and car repair lack confidence in transforming vans by themselves. Because they think it's a very complex system.
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Most people don't want to invest too much time in the upfront preparation, because the pandemic is temporary, and this new form of travel seems to be time-sensitive.
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Some users want to get some tutorials to do some simple crafts.
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More than half of the users want simple and direct access to various resources.
These problems hinder the pace of users chasing Vanlife. Excessive investment in the premise makes users prefer to choose other ways of travel or even simply stay at home to fight against the closed boring time.
Personas
To better guide our design and enable everyone on the team to empathize with our users, I further synthesized the interview results and came up with the following personas:
User Journey Map
The personas described above represent the two user groups we designed this time. In order to build a bridge for communication between these two groups, we create a user journey map from the perspective of new users(Sophie Petschauer).
(Click to enlarge)
Solution
Present all attachment to the users on the main interface.
Home Page
01 Tutorials
02 Book an expert
03 Community
01 We provide users with a platform for crowdsourcing, where people can edit and read tutorials.
02 Of course not everyone is good at handcrafts, so booking an expert is also necessary. Expert can also make money by helping others remodel.
03 We provide users with a platform for communication. Users are able to share their travel destinations and inspiration and recommend to others.
Profile Page
The Profile page contains everything a user needs, including orders, messages and testimonials.
Search
The search page helps users quickly find what they are looking for, including hot topics, history and recommendations.
The integration of available resources is the focus of the design.
Find your Expert
01 Get Help
02 Connection
03 Resource
01 Users can get help from other professionally certified users to easily resolve van remodeling issues.
02 Users can be connected, making the App present a harmonious atmosphere of mutual help.
03 Here we have concentrated as much as possible on the resources available to users in the process of rebuilding the van and have simply integrated and classified them so that users can easily find their needs.
Booking experience and the order
The booking experience we provide our users is smooth and comfortable. The user first selects the service within the framework of the van modification, and enters the address, working hours and task description, the system will recommend nearby experts and workers according to the user's zip code; the user can also read the detailed information of the expert or worker through the ID and avatar and select Reserve.
After the reservation is successful, the page will automatically jump to the order. Users can operate orders here, of course, users can also manage orders through the Profile page.
Inspire users to do-it-yourself modification possibilities.
Tutorials
01 Share knowledge
02 certified editor
03 multiple forms
01 We provide a way for users to share tutorials. Experts can not only modify it for you, but also give you guidance.
02 Thus, tutorials have a higher degree of credibility when certified experts are available. Users can have special identities through system authentication. Of course, an unauthenticated users can also write tutorials - as long as they wants.
03 According to the user's habits and moods, we provide users with the possibility to edit tutorials in multiple forms.
Read and rate
We put the scoring system at the end of the article to ensure that users are eligible to rate at least after viewing the entire article, which makes the scoring accuracy slightly higher.
Of course, users can also comment, like and bookmark.
Build a leisure community to improve the entertainment of App.
Community
01 Share Life
02 Inspiration
03 Entertainment
01 Users are allowed to share their own travel experiences and photos, and users' strengths and aesthetics can be brought into page.
02 Users can get inspiration from other people's blogs, where their next destination is, seaside or forest, traveling alone or in a group.
03 The emergence of the community interface increases the entertainment of the app, mainly used to attract more Vanlife interested parties. If it is used as a single functional app, it will still create barriers between different user groups.
Design
Ideation
After describing the user and analyzing the user journey map, our entire group of designers participated in the process of ideation, and we extracted important processes on the design road, which are shown in the figure below.
We then took a close look at these ideas and discussed their implementation feasibility. For example, we consider the selection of destinations, which is the result of our designers' over-concern. In fact, we don't need to consider this issue. Users will choose the modification direction they need according to the road conditions, and we just provide services.
Therefore, after selection and consideration, we have established the core functions of this service:
Share advice and content related to Vanlife
Connect different groups of users and share resources
Self-learning and helping others learn
Sketches & Wireframes
User Feedback & Iteration
We feel reassured that almost all users love the Tutorial and Booking features, as these two features are the main focus of our appand unique to our app.
First, I used Adobe XD to output a set of prototypes for users to understand and test the basic functions.
Avoid leaking personal privacy & optimize the booking interface
When I first designed the reservation interface, the user was asked to fill in the address details in the first step, which made the user feel uncomfortable and withdrawn.
Because users usually just want to simply check the price or understand the situation, this excessive step makes users rethink when obtaining resources.
So I decided to update the first step to fill in the zip code, so as not to upset the user.
Excessive conspicuousness of community functions
For a functional App, my product has received the affirmation of the first batch of users for the two main functions, and I am proud of it first. Therefore, the entertainment section cannot occupy an important position in the App.
In my first prototype, I put the community on the home page. This splits the user's emotions towards the App. Users want to use a functional app but get entertainment content on the home page.
Therefore, this logic is inappropriate, so I changed the way of entering the community in the subsequent prototype.
Design Language & Appearance and Aesthetics
In addition to functional updates and iterations, aesthetics are also very important to me. As I grew up, I continued to review the project and gradually optimize the product.
As the dust settles on the project, functional updates are no longer as important as they used to be, but cosmetic iterations are eternal, and you'll see my three-generation prototype below.
Prototype I
Prototype II
Prototype III
Final Design
Future Journey
Design and plan the interface as seen by another group of users
Early in our research, we found that there were two groups of users. This product only has an in-depth design for the interface seen by one of the groups, that is, the "user group without handicraft ability". Another group, the "user group with handicraft capabilities", is ignored. In the following description, I will call this Group 2.
The user portraits of group 2 are craftsmen, Vanlife experts, influencers, etc. They mainly spread experience or make money through various functions of the App. This means that for group 2 users, order management, authentication system, traffic monitoring, and income display are all important contents.
From user research to product design to usability testing, it will be a huge workload. Due to time constraints, I did not fully implement these functions in this project.
In future development, if necessary, I will redesign the interface seen by Group 2.
Blueprint design for stakeholders
Although this project explores and discusses design thinking through product design, we still hope to extend the content of communication design to service design.
For our entire design team, the design of the content is far from over. We discussed the ways of communication and connection between the two user groups. Next, we, as designers, or our project proposers as stakeholders, how to connect with users is the next question we have to think about.
We planned and designed the business layout of the entire project, including the Business Canvas Model, service design framework, and brand design. I will redesign and organize this in the future and post it on this website to ensure viewers see the complete project presentation.
Reflection and Discussion on Design Thinking
Regarding the discussion of design thinking involved in the project, all project members have completed their thesis, including me. From an exploratory perspective, the discussion of design thinking in this project has limitations.
First, due to the limitations of the survey conditions, we were unable to reach a sufficient number of respondents. The geographical area affected is not large enough. Therefore, a statistical test sample is not sufficient. There are some differences in understanding user needs and difficulties.
Second, many sources show that synthesis can also belong to the preparatory stage of conception. There are also cases where synthesis supersedes the Phase II definition. There are many models of design thinking. This design takes the double diamond model and the six steps of design repair as the main clues and classifies synthesis into the definition stage, but there are still doubts. A large number of relevant documents should be collected to determine the affiliation of terms. In the future, you can do a lot of design thinking training and understand its steps.
Third, due to time constraints, the process could not be iterated many times, so the research results were not thorough enough.