Friendly companion app to help guide, and make travellers feel more welcome, when going through the New Zealand borders.
University Group Project - Working in an Interdisciplinary group environment to develop, create and revise a design project. This project is focused around assisting the New Zealand Tourism Board.
May 2022
UX Designer
Research
Project Manager
UI Designer
Figma
Adobe CC
Physical Prototyping
3D software
Origami
Visitors to New Zealand do not have a comprehensive and straightforward way to guide them through travel entry requirements (Primarily during covid border re-opening).
An app that included a friendly mascot to help explain and walk travellers through the entire border process with a simplified information and a checklist. Also including a welcome pack once thorugh the borders. This is in an effort to reduce stress and confusion for tired travellers, promoting friendliness and tourism post covid.
My primary role as a designer for this project was UX Design. This meant making sure the project would fit the needs of users - understanding the audience. Which includes work involving persona’s, pain points, user journeys, understanding the problem etc.
For visual design I had input and suggestions for the overall brand and different areas, but primarily did visual design for the application interface.
Being the UX Designer, prototyping was also part of my role. This involved constructing wireframes and UI’s as well as prototyping the welcome pack box and anything that users will interact with.
Research being very important, the research I looked into included user base, traveller/tourism information and statistics, existing systems and designs and researching and breaking down the process for entering New Zealand
In terms of management, my role was to set out primary tasks for group members to do, and helping distribute the workload based on roles, eg. what areas to research, collateral etc..
Visitors to New Zealand do not have a comprehensive and straight forward way to guide them through travel entry requirements.
Whilst brainstorming and creating an info dump, the brief was broken down along side creating a problem statement/research question so that relevant research could be done.
How can we incorporate interfaces simplifying the travel entry requirement information, to create a more welcoming experience for people entering New Zealand?
The area of research that I went into was looking at survey and statistics of tourism and travelers, existing systems that related to trying to solve the problem, and analysing the process for entering New Zealand.
Pain points from surveys of travellers
Traveller age ranges and distribution, primarily older travellers coming to NZ
Largest demographic of travellers to NZ being Asia (China) and western countries (Australia, UK, USA)
Existing platforms, Air New Zealand, Pure NZ, and Tourism NZ. These platforms did not have a user friendly or intuitive way to gather the entry info
Breakdown of the process, finding more pain points and understanding the current situation and journey that travellers have to face.
Looking into how tourist plan trips to NZ and other tourism information
I created a first set of persona's after the research
In order to fulfil the project and develop the prototype as well as understand the travellers journey, I created a journey outline and compiled all the links and info into one process. This information would also be simplified and used for the app, and walk-through guide.
After refining the goals of the project a new set of personas was created.
To start off the prototyping I created a general sitemap of the app, laying out framework for where everything would go.
Going through the prototyping process, I created wireframes and early prototypes for the app. The early prototypes included mobile, desktop, and interface for the kiosk and how it would be used.
Throughout the project I continued to refine the prototype
The final prototype was created on figma. During this process user testing was conducted on some Australian, and overseas users. The user testing and gathering of feedback was very important to making the app more friendly to use. The app development is what I spent the majority of the project developing.
For the welcome pack, I helped in prototyping the early design alongside another group member. Illustrator and Origami Boxshot software was used for this process. Once printed I aided in making a physical small scale version of the welcome pack.
The insights gained from this project will definitely be useful for future projects. In particular researching and looking at an international audience was quite intriguing as their cultures and values may differ from place to place, meaning as a designer you need to take into account these differences.
In terms of the app, doing more user testing and prototyping helps to add design experience. For further developments If I were to work along side someone who may be strong in coding, it would be nice to get a basic downloadable app going on a mobile. I have also learned that it is best to stick to the core idea and functions first when designing an app; to not over-complicate the design. This why once you have a strong base to work from you can then refine and add to the design if needed.
Further more if we were able to document and go through the actual border at the airport through the eyes of an international traveller it would deepen our understanding and help to create a better design. Another area that may have added to the design is exploring animation for the mascot ‘Tery’ and seeing how that may be implemented into the app and be used for greeting travellers. Overall this project was fun and challenging. With only looking at one area of making travellers feel welcome in the entry process, it would be fun to explore other areas in the future.
