Stride
Helping local tourists find new experiences in a place of familiarity.
01
Overview
In an introductory course to user experience design and user research at Simon Fraser University, our team was challenged to discover a problem space within a design domain we were interested in.
Tasks
User research, design system, UI design, interaction design
Timeline
2 months
tools
Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects
Team
Devin Wang, David Qiu, Sahil Sran
02
My role
01
Hosted user interviews to validate our secondary research findings. Synthesized our findings into pain points and action items, which were used to formulate user personas and journey maps.
02
Developed our design system using components and variants, while following style guide principles and UX heuristics.
03
Formed the information architecture for the app and designed the Search, Collection, and Friends feature.
03
Design prompt
For our final project, our team was tasked to “Choose a Design Domain, Become an Expert and Find Opportunities”.
Instead of resolving our own pain points, we began by asking our friends & families their daily and/or current struggles, and we immediately noticed a few common grounds. A prominent pain point was that after the recent COVID-19 Pandemic, majority of the people we knew became a local tourist in their own city, due to international travel restrictions, but many struggled in finding new activities as places were still slowly re-opening.
04
Initial research
Search trends and forum boards
Before diving deeper in understanding our user, we wanted to validate that others (individuals that weren't our friends and/or family) were also experiencing similar obstacles. We evaluated data received from Google’s database, and analyzed online forum boards (i.e. Reddit and Discord channels).
Google Search Trends
Outdoor activities
Google Trends showed a considerable increase in searchers looking for things to do outdoors in 2021. As consumers feel more comfortable coming out of isolation, outdoor activity searches for seasonal entertainment have gained popularity.
Live Events
While large crowd-drawing events were largely on hold in 2020, consumers eased back into live events in 2021. Summer and fall search trends indicate that stadium events, concerts, and even movie theaters are on consumers’ minds once more as businesses and venues reopen.
500% increase
in mobile searches for “events/attractions” plus “near me” from 2016-2018, as people look for local concerts, tourist attractions, and other activities
Google Data, U.S., April 2015–March 2016 vs. April 2017–March 2018.
6x increase
in mobile searches for “things to do/activities” plus “near me” over the last two years. Some of these examples include: “things to do near me today,” “kids activities near me,” “things to do near me this weekend.”
Google Data, U.S., April 2015–March 2016 vs. April 2017–March 2018.
Forum Boards
05
Design domain
Finding the “New” in a place of familiarity
As stores and events slowly re-open after the recent pandemic, there has been an exponential spike in local tourism - but struggle to find new activities and events in a city they’re so familiar with. Local explorers (the name we’ve chosen to identify them as) want to find new experiences in their local metropolitan area, strengthen connections with their community, and learn more about the city they live in.
Explorers spend a lot of time searching for novel activities they want to try, but lack the resources to help them discover and collect new, reliable places.
06
User research
Hosted 8 interviews and 30 surveys filled
To better understand our domain, we compiled data and testimonials through a qualitative (user interview) and quantitative (online survey) approach. Our focus was to derive pain points, road blocks, and address potential opportunities that would fulfill our users’ end goals.
Here are some of our key findings:
User interviews
87% of the Interviewees said they rely on Yelp, Facebook, Instagram, or Google to search for activities to do with their friends. And 71% of them follow city bloggers or content creators to discover these new places.
75% of the Interviewees said it is difficult to find new places, activities, or events that they haven’t been to before, and 83% of them would like to try something new at least once a month.
100% of the interviewees trust their friend’s recommendation over a stranger’s, and 75% of them would visit a new event or place and, try a new activity that their friend suggested.
Testimonials
Yelp is pretty reliable when it comes to finding restaurants, and even things to do, but it’s difficult for me to trust the reviews of strangers. If there was a feature that allowed me to view the comments of my friends, or people I trust and have the same preferences as me, then I will know for sure that I should visit that place.
Joanne L.
Working Professional
It isn’t difficult finding new places, but I have trouble memorizing locations and activities I want to try when I’m actually out with my friends. It would be convenient if I received recommendations of the places I want to try when I’m near the area.
Kyle V.
College Student
I follow a lot of foodies and bloggers on Instagram to see what’s new in Vancouver and I like how I’m able to save their posts. But it requires a lot of effort and Google searching to find out more information about the place and to book tickets or reservations.
Stella H.
College Student
Avatars from Memojis
07
User persona
Let me introduce you to Kyle Housen
After synthesizing the data from our research and interviews, we created multiple personas but had Kyle as our primary touchpoint with the audience. Kyle's goals and pain points are a reflection of the primary problems we're trying to solve and the objectives we're trying to help our users accomplish.
08
User journey
Let's follow Kyle’s process as he tries to find a new, local experience
In this specific journey map, we are analyzing Kyle’s thought process at every touchpoint as he tries to find a restaurant that him and his friend, Miya, hasn’t been to. We built this map by giving the same prompt to 4 of our past interviewees and had them vocalized their actions, goals, feelings, and thoughts throughout the flow.
Please download the journey map to view it closer.
09
Problem space
How might we ease the process of finding and collecting novel activities, events, and places that match the preferences of local explorers?
After thorough research and having continuous dialogue with our interviewees and with users on online forum boards, we formulated this HMW statement to drive and align our ideation process to seek a solution for this question.
10
Introducing Stride
A cityscape exploration app. Helping local tourists find new experiences in a place of familiarity.
what’s strIde?
Primary Focus
A mobile app that allows you to track where you’ve been and want to visit in your city.
View and explore your friend’s favorite places and share yours with them, too.
11
My role
User Research, Design System, UI + Interaction Design
My primary focus at the beginning of the project was compiling data from Google Trends and leading the user interviews. This required brainstorming non-bias, non-leading questionnaires, scribing during the interview sessions, and synthesizing the answers we’d received.
As we started our design process, Devin and I spearheaded the Design System, which included our style guideline and information architecture. This process involved a lot of lateral ideation, researching brands and digital products in our space, and continuous communication with the Teaching team for feedback.
When we began building Stride, I had a goal of becoming a better interaction designer and, luckily David had profuse experience and was willing to help improve my skills as we worked on prototyping my interfaces together. The features I designed from wireframes to Hi-Fi mockups were the Sign-in/Sign-up, Search, Collection, and Friends.
Some screen examples of the interfaces I designed:
Sign-up / Sign-in
Search
Collection
Friends
12
Future improvements
Improve Search, Onboarding, and Privacy
As I continue working on this project beyond the classroom setting, the improvements I'm planning to integrate focuses on three factors:
1. Designing a filtering system in all features that involve searching as it improves customization and enables a more efficient searching process
2. Implementing an onboarding process for new users using navigation callout cards
3. Building transparency and accessibility for the user to change and monitor their personal information
Filter to improve searching experience
Ease the process of finding a location by incorporating filters to different features of our app that involve any type of searching. Currently, only the home page has a filter.
Enable filtering by:
1. Friends
2. Most recent, most popular, or nearby
3. Availability
Onboarding process
Bite size, in-app tutorials for new users. Callout cards will gradually appear and introduce the user to navigations and features as they begin to explore the app.
Prioritize user’s privacy
Learning from location-based apps, like Snapchat and Strava, it is essential to championing the user when user privacy is involved. Privacy and security settings should be transparent, accessible, and intuitive to control.
