Team members: David Lux, Shivali Mody, Yawen Wang
Project Summary
Research question:In this project we asked, how can we help people plan international trips that include their families with children?
My role: I collaborated with my team members to conduct different research activities and analyze results to final deliverables.
More people in the US are traveling internationally (Plantz, 2014); planning international travel is more complicated than a domestic trip (Longwell, 2015). Planning international travel can take a significant amount of time, and can be confusing because of the overload of information about pricing, ratings, schedules, and up-sell.
Observation
We began this research with observations of three people as they planned an international trip from their homes. Our participants were all mothers with one to two children and travel internationally at least once every other year. We found our participants performed some similar and some different steps when planning their trips.
Similar steps included the use of a computer (laptop) for searching, starting with Google. They were searched and compared information repeatedly. Additionally, all participants reviewed social media and used rating websites to compare information; finally, all calculated the overall cost of the trip.
Differences included: (a) not all participants documented their itineraries while they were searching for potential events at their destinations; and (b) only some participants made complete detailed plans that included restaurants and train tickets.
Interview
Our interview protocol focuses on four aspects – warm up, general questions, deep focus and demographics. We used this protocol to conduct three interviews. Interviews’ answers provide valuable information into their behaviors.
We analyzed our findings into six themes. Participants (1) used more than one website or applications to plan travel; (2) wanted to have one-stop planning approach; (3) planned the trip at least two weeks ahead; (4) took price, ratings/reviews and other factors as consideration; (5) liked to have assistance during planning stage; (6) took notes by using tools while planning the trip.
Survey
Our survey had 26 questions and 32 participants. In order to have deeper understanding of our observations and interviews and consistency of our research , we only ask people who must be a parent or guardian of a child and traveled internationally with their child/children.
We categorized our survey findings into five themes. Participants: 1) used multiple website and application to plan past trip; 2) would love to have all-in-one solutions; 3) used 6-10 hours or more to plan their trip in general; 4) were influenced by price, rating/reviews and availability; 5) considered their friends’ recommendations as the most important sources.
Before sending out the survey, we assumed that
Hypothesis One: People use more websites or applications to plan an international trip are more likely book more reservations prior to arriving the destination
Hypothesis Two: People who are older will spend less time online to plan an international trip
In order to our two hypotheses, we particularly focused on analyzing six survey question responses from thirty-two qualified participants.
Data Analysis (Procedure)
After the survey was closed, we used Excel to organize raw data from user responses. We grouped data based on themes that included tools and technology, experience, research, preferences, as well as participant demographics.
We also used SPSS to test the significance of differences in the participant’s responses over time. We also tested hypotheses related to our research question. To test these hypotheses, we used SPSS to determine if our participants had any significance differences based on age or based on volume of websites and applications used in their travel planning.
Features Matrix
Based upon the information and data collected through our observations, interviews, and surveys, we identified the following possible features to assist families in their international travel planning process.
Personas
We created two personas to represent our findings from research activities.
Conclusion
Following our observations, interviews, and a survey, we recommend designing a multi-platform application (website and mobile) to deliver a brand new travel planning experience. The application would provide seven sections:
Recommendation – In the recommendation section of the application, it will have two subsections: destination and promotion recommendation. If the user does not have a specific travel destination in mind, he/she could start with browsing. Each subsection will also have sorting and keyword searching function.
Travel Itinerary Sharing – In the travel itinerary sharing, application users would be able to share their itinerary and comments for different destinations. Users will able to get inspired by viewing the trips and itineraries from other users. Additionally, users could search for specific cities or countries. If the user likes it, he/she could add to a favorites for future reference.
Destination overall – In the destination overall section, it will have a literature for both country and city level destinations, and users could download them in advance when they travel without Internet. If users choose to view a city’s information through the application, it will allow the user to check this city’s points of interest, restaurants and hotels, transportation, ticket info, and so on.
My Itinerary – In the my itinerary section, it will prove a tool to help user to make a customized international trip and do-it-yourself.
Users will be able to build a completely customized plan from within the app. Use will need to type or choose 1) origin city; 2) destination and/or list of cities they would like to visit (optional); 3) travel days and departure date; 4) travel theme (first time, travel with children, shopping and etc.); 5) budget type: economic, general, luxury. When the itinerary is generated, users could edit it depending on personal preferences, and they could also place bookings.
For do-it-yourself, user will be able to create a plan on his/her preference and view the trips of other users’ trips for inspiration.
Booking/Review – In booking/review section of the application. User will book his/her tickets in the application including flight, hotel, restaurant, activity and so on. User could also sort available options by pricing, ratings, popularity, and so on. When a user views the booking page, it will have a review section for other users to post their experience.
GPS Function – In GPS function of the application, it not only will allow users to locate where they are but also will automatically show places that user could explore (overall information about the city). Users will be able to change their plan or look for different services when they need. We believe this type of convenience is especially important for travelers with children.
Community – In the community section, application users will help each other. Planners will able to make connections with other users who are locals in the prospective destination in advance. If users have any questions while traveling, he/she could get help easily.
This is an overall feature introduction of our interactive application. We believe a multi-platform application would improve the experience of planning international trip for family with children greatly.
Future work
In future work we would expand the size of our participant tool. We want to have participants with a wide range of age and culture differences to see what impacts results. It would give us a better understanding why people behave in certain ways. Also, we learned that budget is big concern while planning international trips. We could add more questions about how financial concerns affects the planning process. Additionally, we could ask participants’ family members, such as their children and spouse, to join our studies. It could help us to understand how family members influence the planner’s behavior.
