The Project
Nowy is an app created to be the ultimate AI-powered travel planning assistant. It is equipped with advanced artificial intelligence capable of comprehending user preferences and requirements, making it a valuable tool for anyone organizing a journey. The ongoing project focuses on enhancing Nowy's user interfaces, with a special emphasis on deeply understanding and improving user experiences.
Role
UX Researcher
UX Designer
UI Designer
Tools
Figma
Photoshop
Maze
Success Metric
The project's success metric is to improve the app's interface and user experience, making it simpler for users to fully access and utilize Nowy’s capabilities, while discovering and eliminating pain points.
Primary Objectives
Enhance User Engagement - Aim to improve user engagement with the app through intuitive interface re-designs.
Discover & Solve User Problems - Address specific user problems that we’ll uncover during the initial research phase and eliminate them.
Improve Usability and Accessibility - Enhance the usability & accessibility of the app, making it more accommodating by redesigning the user interface for clarity, simplicity, and ease of use.
Strengthen Brand Identity - Redesign the logo & develop a consistent typeface and design system that aligns with and reinforces the brand’s identity.
Reposition the App’s Focus - Shift the app’s focus towards trip planning and income generation while making social media features secondary.
Increase Revenue Opportunities - Aim to redirect users with options that generate revenue for the company like booking commissions.
Research Objectives
Understand user behavior and preferences through mapping common user journeys, grasping user motivations, and analyzing user flow to identify pain points.
Evaluate usability and improve interfaces by examining navigation and user-friendliness, focusing on the analysis of interface design and functionality.
Boost personalization and user engagement through identifying individual user needs and discovering avenues for increased engagement.
Guide design and feature development by uncovering desired features and gaining deeper insights into the engagement of the market page.
Advance business objectives by identifying ways to synchronize user needs with business strategies.
User Interviews
Upon determining the focus of the research, I conducted video-chat interviews with 12 Nowy users, ranging from daily to new users. The primary goal of these interviews was to address the following questions:
Which feature of Nowy's AI do users utilize the most and the least?
To what extent are users leveraging the app for trip booking, and why might some features be underused?
What difficulties do users encounter when planning a trip with Nowy?
What incentives can encourage users to book via Nowy’s app, particularly with its Priceline and Viator partnerships, rather than booking externally?
Which features are lacking in the Nowy App? What challenges do users encounter while using and navigating through the app?
Key Insights
Information Overload: Users indicated that the app, especially the home page, presents an abundance of information and options. Introducing a guide right at the start can assist users in comprehending the extensive capabilities of Nowy's AI.
Usability Challenges: Users are encountering difficulties with the app's interface. From the small, disproportionately sized buttons to a feed that isn't personalized, these elements are creating obstacles. Many features of the app remain unclear to users without in-depth exploration.
Incentivize the Users: Nowy's major challenge is users planning their trips with the app but booking elsewhere. While revenue comes from affiliate links with partners like Priceline, there's no current incentive for users to complete bookings through the app. Enhancing convenience and offering rewards could motivate users to book within the app. Additionally, implementing codes for use during the checkout process on partner platforms could help track referrals from Nowy.
Shift the app’s focus: The home page of Nowy blends AI-generated trip suggestions with social media elements. Given the lack of user engagement and the absence of financial gains from the social media features, it's necessary to redirect the app's emphasis towards AI-driven trip planning and bookings. This shift not only aims to increase revenue for the company but also centers on the app's primary value proposition for users.
Research Constraints
The main constraint of this project is the small user base to gather information from. Initially, the development team focused more on constructing the app than on grasping user experiences, leading to a situation where not many users are consistently interacting with the app as expected. As a result, some of the users interviewed have a limited knowledge of how Nowy functions.
Competitive Analysis
I worked with the Nowy team to evaluate the apps of competitors in the same market, aiming to identify their strengths and how we can surpass them. The competitors include:
Wanderlog stands out as the most notable app in this field, having secured funding in the past year and advancing their app to full functionality. However, their key features are locked behind a subscription model.
iPlan.ai is another competitor, emphasizing the AI's role in crafting excellent travel plans. Their drawback lies in an underwhelming interface and a lack of creativity in user experience.
Orbt, a travel AI startup slightly ahead of Nowy in development, offers a simple and effective interface. However, their focus isn't on AI capabilities; it's more about discovering new destinations and activities, lacking the advanced AI integration seen in other apps.
These apps share features and business models that are similar to the Nowy’s.
Initial User Interface Enhancements
One of my first changes was to the homepage of Nowy. I made it a priority to increase button sizes on the create a trip and the bottom menu, along with creating a banner that lined up properly in the app. Lastly, I took the small AI button and turned it into a pop-up because one of the main features shouldn’t be hard to find.
Another key area of focus is creating continuity through the structure of the app. Previously, navigating the app often felt like it was bringing the user to another app. From user interviews, I made the assumption that bigger button sizes would help lead to a better aesthetic.
I immediately began addressing the interface problems in Nowy's app, starting with the smaller issues and progressively moving to the larger ones. Insights gained from user interviews and competitor analysis guided me in pinpointing the areas requiring the most changes. A larger overhaul is coming but it was important for us to revise on the existing interface so that we can continue to test the features of the app.
Another key area of focus was the marketplace page. Booking commissions are the only possible to make revenue at Nowy currently, so I made the assumption to create a bigger focus on hotels and flights. Turning the small buttons under search into larger sections was a good first step in creating a strong market page.
While the social component was not main focus of interface updates, I still felt that I could improve the existing pages. My focus was continuity from previous pages so the app looks uniform. I was only able to make small changes as the founders were insistent on colors and formatting.
Nowy Re-Brand & Design System
Initial Logo
After updating the app's interface, I concentrated on enhancing Nowy's branding and establishing a unified design system, focusing on colors, typography, icons, and resources.
New Logo
Despite the logo update appearing subtle, the founders wanted it closely aligned with the original. My goal was to maintain its essence while enhancing resizeability. The original's fine lines and color blending reduced visibility when scaled down. By introducing negative space to separate colors, I ensured consistent visibility at any size.
Typography and Design System
A major focus for me was ensuring consistent typography across the app and laying the groundwork for a design system. Initially, the app mixed Arial and Apple SD Gothic fonts, which weren't ideal. After experimenting with various fonts, we chose Roboto as Nowy's primary font.
I also devoted significant effort to developing a resource library for the app. This includes system colors and gradients, Nowy’s brand colors, a unique icon style, illustrations, and a new style for app store images.
(Let me know if you'd like to see these.)
Trial and Error on a New Feature
I also concentrated on creating and testing the "Lazy Maps" feature, which displays numerous attractions within a specific area on the screen, drawing significant inspiration from a well-known app in China.
This feature was very much an experiment. The Chinese app that inspired us is OVERWHELMING, and even after reducing the number of attractions displayed, user testers found the screens too cluttered.
Ultimately, we decided to remove the Lazy Maps feature and incorporate its functionality into the trip planner, enabling users to select their "must-sees" and devise a travel itinerary.
Homepage and Market Page Overhauls
After updating the app's interface, I concentrated on enhancing Nowy's branding and establishing a unified design system, focusing on colors, typography, icons, and resources.
I experimented with several styles to determine the optimal appearance for the home page. In the end, I combined elements from each concept, refining them until we achieved a home page design we all agreed on. (I did not design the Upload/Travel Map button, the developer was insistent on this look.) This marked a significant departure from the original homepage by redirecting attention from social features to "My Trips." This is still in development, so we have only been able to test it on Maze, not through real testing on the app.
I also prioritized developing a market page centered on hotels, flights, and Viator activities, moving away from a cluttered marketplace to a clearer layout. This new design offers users recommended travel destinations and simplifies the process of searching for destinations by category. Additional user testing found that users were able to find and book hotels significantly more efficiently after the redesign. There is still an issue where there is a lack of incentive for the user to book hotels in the Nowy App.
Reflection
The Next Steps
Working with a startup at such an early stage is a new experience for me. While Nowy has a functional app, the development process is slower since everyone involved is balancing it with their day jobs, limiting the resources available.
The most significant obstacle I encountered at Nowy was the company's unclear identity. The app spread its focus too thinly across various features, neglecting the sole revenue-generating aspect. Given the ever-evolving AI landscape and the competition, it's crucial for Nowy to clarify its vision and concentrate on a core offering, rather than trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. I also question the relevance of the social media feature within this app.
Another challenge I've encountered is communication difficulties with a programmer based in China, making it hard to convey our respective visions effectively. Often, I have felt like my opinion didn’t matter because the programmer wanted things his way.
Another issue was the initial design work, which was done by someone without formal design expertise. This has led to numerous areas needing improvement. With only one developer working on the app, some solutions are more about patching issues rather than fully resolving them.
Despite these challenges, I'm genuinely enthusiastic about working on this app because I love travel, and know AI is the future. My previous experience using ChatGPT for trip planning aligns well with Nowy's focus on leveraging AI technology specifically for travel. The AI's ability to tailor trip suggestions based on personal interests, distance, and other factors is incredibly promising. I'm excited about the potential of AI in this field and am eager to see Nowy succeed.
There's a lot of work ahead to enhance this app, but its concept and technology hold great promise. Here are my upcoming steps in the product design process:
Continuing to develop a robust design system is crucial. A consistent design across different pages is vital, and currently, the same person handling programming is also responsible for design aesthetics, with no experience. Establishing a design system, creating a cohesive set of icons, and defining key brand colors are my priorities. I would like to overhaul the icons and continue redesigning pages.
I'm also focusing on devising ways to incentivize users to book through the app. This involves conducting a new series of user interviews and studying business models that effectively use incentives. We're exploring a points-based reward system for booking additional travel.
A bigger branding overhaul is on the agenda too. The founders initially used a template for the logo, which was adequate for the time being, but there's room for a more impactful design than the small change I made for sizability.
Thank you for taking the time to read my case study.