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The Problem
Kelly is a 20 something who lives in the island town of Kaneohe and wants to travel back to her home in Hana. She wants to look at the best options available for her travel which are economic, quick and safe and she is able to compare all the options to make an informed decision.
Goals
- Find the quickest and cheapest mode of transportation
- Enable quick decision making as to which option to book by comparing the different options
- Give a seamless experience
- Premium Hawaiian feel while interacting with the app
Presenting Holo
Holo is a highly innovative premium travel aggregation platform that specialises in travel across islands throughout the world. It is HQ’d in Hawaii, USA. The name Holo is inspired from the idea of Holoportation and the Hawaiian word for speed.
Holoportation is a new type of 3D capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted anywhere in the world in real time.
What is a travel aggregation platform?
A travel aggregation platform is one that searches for deals across multiple websites and shows you the results in one place. For example, if you want to find a cheap flight from Dubai to New York City, you check American Airways or just head down to an aggregator app or website and check for hundreds of airlines at once to select the cheapest.
It collects and aggregates data from thousands of travel service providers, then, they develop their own travel agency app and website for customers to compare travel options.
In case of Holo, the travel aggregators are:
- Hawaiian Airlines Flight
- Island Seaplane Services
- Hawaii Interisland Super Ferry
- Hawaii One Hyperloop
Options available for travel
From Kaneohe to Hana
The problem at hand had the following 4 options available for travel.
Reflecting on the modes of travel, I had to come up with the following data points to show in the final UI to enable easy decision making for Kelly
- Trip start time
- Trip end time
- No of stops
- Total trip duration
- Total trip cost
In order to gather the above-mentioned data points, I did a detailed breakup of the available timings and routes
1. Hawaiian Airlines Flight ✈️
Stop 1 | Stop 2 | Reaching destination | Cost of travel | Available flights | No of stops |
🚖 Kaneohe → Honolulu
20 min | ✈️ Honolulu → Kahului
40 min | 🚖 Kahului → Hana
2 hr | $10+ $150 + $80 | 11:30 am
12:30 pm
3:45 pm
5:00 pm | 2 |
Time summary
Total trip duration: 4 h 30 min 🚖 20 min + 1 h for check-in at airport + ✈️ 40 min + 30 min for check-out + 🚖 2 h
Trip start time and end time calculated on the basis of the timing summary as follows:
✈️ Flight departure time | Trip start time | Trip end time |
1. 11:30 am | 10:10 am | 2:40 pm |
2. 12:30 pm | 11:10 am | 3:40 pm |
3. 3:45 pm | 2:25 pm | 7:15 pm |
4. 5:00 pm | 3:40 pm | 8:10 pm |
Cost summary
Total trip cost: $240 🚖 $10 + ✈️ $150 + 🚖 $80
2. Island Seaplane Services 🛬
Direct flight | Cost of travel | Available flights | No. of stops |
🛬 Kaneohe → Hana
1.5 hr | $350 | 12:00 pm
2:30 pm | Direct |
Time summary
Total trip duration: 1 h 30 min
Trip start time and end time calculated on the basis of the timing summary as follows:
✈️ Flight departure time | Trip start time | Trip end time |
1. 12:00 pm | 12:00 pm | 1:30 pm |
2. 2:30 pm | 2:30 pm | 4:00 pm |
Cost summary
Total trip cost: $350
3. Hawaii Interisland Superferry ⛴
Direct ferry | Cost of travel | Available ferry | No. of stops |
⛴ Kaneohe → Hana
2.5 hr | $100 | 3:30 pm | Direct |
Time summary
Total trip duration: 1 h 30 min
Trip start time and end time calculated on the basis of the timing summary as follows:
✈️ Ferry departure time | Trip start time | Trip end time |
1. 3:30 pm | 3:30 pm | 6:00 pm |
Cost summary
Total trip cost: $100
4. Hawaii One Hyperloop 🚅
Stop 1 | Reaching destination | Cost of travel | Available hyperloops | No. of stops |
🚖 Kaneohe → Honolulu
20 min | 🚅 Honolulu → Hana
10 min | $10+ $500 | 10:30 am
2:30 pm
5:30 pm | 1 |
Time summary
Total trip duration: 40 min 🚖 20 min + 10 min for check-in at train station + 🚅 10 min
Trip start time and end time calculated on the basis of the timing summary as follows:
🚅 Hyperloop departure time | Trip start time | Trip end time |
1. 10:30 pm | 10:00 am | 10:40 am |
2. 2:30 pm | 2:00 pm | 2:40 pm |
3. 5:30 pm | 5:00 pm | 5:40 pm |
Cost summary
Total trip cost: $510 🚖 $10 + 🚅 $500
Market research
Browsing through different travel aggregation platforms and understanding the information architecture
1. Skyscanner
Key findings
- Skyscanner always gives you the cheapest price on flights
- It recommends the best value flights
- User sees the different options of available flights sorted according to “Cheapest First”
- It gives information about the airline the user will be travelling with, source, destination, start time, end time, total duration, no. of stops, total price and a clear CTA to book
Insights from market research
- User should be able to see one list that shows all the available options of travel in one go
- Travel service provider name is clearly listed
- User should be able to see the total travel time including the number of stops
- Source and destination should be clearly listed
- User should be able to easily see total trip cost
Information Architecture
❤️ Special thanks to Javier Alaves for creating this awesome and easy-to-use information architecture kit.
Default Sorting Logic
1. “Top best deals for you”
When app opens, top deals are shown on top which the engine recommends for quick decision making in which ‘Cheapest’ is the first card because Kelly belongs to the age group of 20-35 yrs, so price can be a deciding factor.
2. “Other options”
Followed by top deals are all other options available for travel. These are sorted as follows:
- Non-stop options sorted according to ‘Departure First’
- With-stop options sorted to ‘Fewer stops First’
- 1-stop options sorted according to ‘Arrival time: Earliest First’
- 2-stop options sorted according to ‘Arrival time: Earliest First’
Finding the perfect inspiration for UI
Making a Hawaiian 🌺 🌊 moodboard
Holo’s colour scheme should be greatly influenced by the vibrant colours found all across Hawaii to give it a personalised, playful and premium feeling. Basically, Hawaiian touch 🤗 🌺 🌊
I researched about the islands in Hawaii and found out that Hawaii colors are in it’s wide variety of flowers that are found on different islands of Hawaii.
The colors come from the flowers of Hawaiian island and, hence, they become the official colors of Hawaii.
1. Maui – Pink – Lokelani rose The pink color of the roses that bloom everywhere on the Valley Isle. “A rose by any other name would still be a rose”, and as a matter of fact it does have another name, Lokelani (low-kay-lawn’-ee). That’s Hawaiian for the Maui Rose. Boldly pink and fragrant is the Maui Rose.
2. Oahu – Yellow – Ilima flower With all its freeways of gray, and hotels of white, and cliffs of green, Oahu’s color is yellow. It is from a golden yellow flower the Ilima. It is the symbol of love. It blooms brightest at the Urban Garden Center. It is the only flower that grows on the island of Oahu.
3. Kauai – Purple – Mokihana berry Kauai, its color is purple, the color of the flowers on the fragrant Mokihana Tree. Berries on the tree have been used for centuries as perfume and air-fresheners. Ancient Hawaii.
I wanted to give my app a tropical feeling of a Hawaiian sunset. A typical hawaiin sunset looks something like this. The palm tress and the purple hue really give a feeling of a tropical hawaiian setting.
Keeping the typical Hawaiian colors and the island sunset in sync, color picking my palette from the sunset was the best option to give an authentic feeling to the application.
The Solution
Assumptions
- Source and destination are already entered.
- Because Holo is an aggregation platform, it will provide service to book the entire package. There can also be an option or ability to just book the individual modes of transport.
- Because Holo is booking the entire trip and cost for radio taxi is included, the start time of the trip is assumed based on the travel time.
- For brevity, it is assumed that all the flights, hyperloop and seaplane are of equal duration.
- Hyperloop transportation is like metro, wherein, which takes approximately 10 min to check-in.
Link to Prototype
You can view the prototype using the following options:
- Open in browser and interact with the prototype using your cursor
- Download Figma Mirror from App Store or Play Store app on your phone → Click on the link from your phone → You will be re-directed to the Figma Mirror app
You might experience jerks and slowness while interacting with the prototype on your phone due to slow network. If issue persists, please switch to the browser experience.
Welcome any suggestions you might have. Thanks 😊
Next steps
There can be multiple add-ons like Google flights like:
- Recommend climate conscious and environment friendly flights
- Show price graph for easy comparison
- Show travel restrictions, if any
- Create a feeling of missing out for the user
- Educate user about the destination (s)he is travelling to
- Explore nearby
- Popular things to do