Trip Split
Trip Split is a shared expense recording app, that is designed to simplify the process of splitting travel expenses for young travellers. With features such as creating a new trip and inviting friends, adding shared expenses to a shared document, and calculating each traveler's share, our app takes the stress out of managing travel finances. By providing a user-friendly platform for collaboration and transparency, we empower young travellers to enjoy their trips without worrying about the logistics of splitting expenses.
Role: UX Research, Design Strategy, UX/UI Design
Project Type: Academic, Capstone
Tools: Figma
Time Line: 10 weeks
Problem Space
Sharing expenses on trips can often be a challenging task for a group of travellers. Keeping track of who paid for what, how much each person owes, and settling up at the end of the trip can be time-consuming and stressful, often leading to misunderstandings, arguments, and even ruined friendships. Additionally, split expenses such as hotel bills, transportation, and meals can quickly add up, making it difficult for travellers to budget and manage their finances effectively. Therefore, there is a need for a convenient and efficient solution that simplifies the process of sharing expenses on trips and helps travellers avoid unnecessary hassle and tension.
Goal
At first, I have designed a Goal that I wanted to reach at the end of the project. This goal has given me guide lines and insured me that I will not go off track.
Design a digital solution that would help groups of travellers to record shared expenses, without taking much of their time and make the experience as simple and quick as possible.
Design Process
Double Diamond
I have used the Double Diamond framework through the project. This has allowed me to structure my work into 4 linear sections, rather than attempting to do everything at the same time.
Discover
Research
Secondary
First of all I have conducted secondary research into the problem and these are facts and figures that I have found
Key Statistics
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Gen Z travels an average of 29 days per year
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51% of Gen Z travalers are planning international trips while 37% of them have plans for domestic vacations
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65% of Gen Zers ranked ’travel and seeing the world’ as the most important way to spend their money
Gen Z
Travel in a group
38%
Travel Alone
62%
From statistics Generation Z have the highest rate of travelling in a group among all generations.
Primary
To further gather information about the theme I have conducted primary research.
I have conducted 3 interviews with people who often go on holidays with large groups of friends to find out about their experience of group travel with regards to sharing expenses, how they would approach this process and all about their experience.
Obtained data points were divided into Motivation, Paint points and Behaviours and plotted on an Affinity Map for analysis and common theme extraction.
From the intreviews, 3 main themes have been extracted.
Saving
It is cheaper to rent an apartment or a villa with friends
I often overpay at the restaurants when we split the bill equally
Recording Expenses
I record my expenses of Iphone notes
It is frustrating when expenses recorded by different people is different
Argumanets
I feel very uncomfortable when asking friends for the money they own me
It is uncomfortable to speak about finance during the trip
Insights
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traveling in a group is cheaper
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All users didn't use an app for shared recordings
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All users have encountered financial disputes when travelling
Define
Who is the target Audience
Persona
After getting insights about travellers and their experience of sharing expenses in a group, I have created a persona based of my second research findings and users I have interviewed. This persona shares representative characteristics across all my findings and show a target consumer that I would be solving the problem for.
Experience map
To create empathy with the user and find opportunity an experience map has been constructed, showing users journey of getting to a restaurant and paying for food on a vacation with friends.
How Might We question
Based of research and insights gained, a HMW question has been constructed to closely define a problem that i am going to solve.
How Might We make it easier for groups of friends on holiday to manage their shared expenses?
Develop
Functionality of the solution
User Stories
After identifying potential opportunities, I have created 30 user stories in relation to the HMW question, in order to understand possible functionality of the app.
After 30 user stories were created, I have grouped them in to Epics, which helped with further defining required functionality for users.
The chosen Epic is Sharing expenses with friends.
This Epic has been chosen because it has a big variety of possible user usability needs. This Epic works well with the initial problem statement of travellers finding it difficult to manage shared finances on a trip and HMW question.
Sharing Expenses with Friends
1) As a Young traveller, I want to track my daily expenses so that I don’t go over the planned budget.
2) As a Young traveller, I want to share expenses with my friends so that it is more convenient to pay for in turns.
3) As a Young traveller, I want to record our group expenses so that our group can negotiate expenses fairly.
Managing Finances
1) As a young traveller with a group, I want to send notifications to my friends that they owe me money, so that it is easier to start the conversation.
2) As a Young traveller, I want to see the history of our recorded expenses so that we as a group can access them to resolve any disputes
3) As a Young traveller, I want to verify costs that by friends have assigned for me so that I can confirm that I agree with them.
1) As a Young traveller, I want to organise my budget for my trip so that I don’t spend too much.’
2) As s Young traveller with a group of friends, I want to decide and record group expenses in advance so that I can start planning my daily budget
3) As a as a Young traveller with a group of friends, I want to budget planned activities for the trip, so that I can calculate exact amount I would need for the holiday.
Budgeting the Trip
Setting up planned resources
1) As a young traveller, I want to make my financial recordings with different currencies, so that I can easily make calculations.
2) As a young traveller, I want to save documents with financial expenses from different trips , so that I can refer to them when I am planning my next trips
3) As a young traveller with a group, I want to use a communal account with shared budget for group expenses, so that we each pay the same amount
Task Flow
Based on the chosen Epic and user stories of Sharing expenses, two task flow diagrams have been constructed.
The first task flow follows steps for the user to create a shared document for a trip and invite his friends
The second task flow follow how a user would add an expense at the restaurant, by taking a picture of the receipt, paying and checking who owes him and how much.
Ideation
Exploration
Once I had an understanding of functionality and a task flow that my app would need to have, I began the ideation process. Through Ideation process I have began to a series of exercises that would help with creating my first wireframes.
Story Board
First of all I have designed a Story board which would further allow me to emphasise with the persona and get a better understanding of their journey. The story board talks about a group of friends going on a journey, where they have to pay for a series of shared expenses. Through out the journey, the group uses an App to record shared expenses and at the end they are able to settle up expenses fairly with ease.
Crazy 8
Crazy 8 is an activity where there is only 1 minute to draw an idea that you have.
This is a good exercise for gathering ideas and exploring different ways to executing the solution to a problem.
In this crazy 8 I have experimented with a variety of possible ways that the app would show different screens throughout the users journey.
Exploratory sketches
The next step was to make a series of exploratory sketches, where I have experimented with various screen layouts and formats. When creating my sketches, I have taken inspiration from Splitwise and Splid Apps which have a similar functionality to my solution.
Home Page
Shared Expenses Feed
Adding New Trip
Inviting Friends
Solution Sketches
Based on Exploratory sketches, I have created solution sketches, which will be turned in to Mid Fidelity wireframes.
Inviting Friends
Shared Expenses Feed
Trip Creation
Home page
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Deliver
User Testing
Plan
To bring the product to the next level, it was important to conduct user testing to receive feedback and address issues that will be revealed through out the process. A total of 2 round of user testings has been conducted, with 5 users taking part in each stage and telling about their experience.
At the beginning of every user testing, the participants were told that there are no right or wrong answers and the whole purpose of this testing is to benefit user experience. The users were than given a scenario and were told that they could start.
Here is the list of objectives the testers had to accomplish:
Part 1
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Set up a trip
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Invite friends
Part 2
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Locate trip in progress
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Add a new expense
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Upload a picture of a receipt
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Select that user is going to pay for the whole bill
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Check the balance with friends
At the end of the test, users were asked a series of question to find out about their experience and what possible things they could have struggled with.
User Testing Round 1
In this table we can see a summary of users experience after completing the first round of user testings.
All users were able to complete all activities.
Over all the users have found adding expense task complicated and confusing.
Despite everyone being happy about the setting up new trip easy, it was not done very well and could be improved.
Users have noted that they would want to see confirmation notification after they have completed a certain task.
After receiving results from the first user testing, I have created a design Prioritisation Matrix to help me make decisions on what I could do to improve users experience and prepare for the second round of user testing.
Through prioritisation matrix I have made a decision to make changes to things that would require less effort and could bring higher user value first.
Old
Changes after first round
Changes were made to selecting when the trip is going to take place.
By shifting the box of selecting dates, it became more visual and easier to follow.
Old
The first change made was the layout of the expense block. Users Icons have been added to make it more visual who has paid.
Date of the expense layout has been changed, to make the layout more clean.
Buttons for different functions have been changed, to make it more intuitive to use.
New
New
User Testing Round 2
From the second round of user testings I have found that the adding new trip and inviting friends has become much easier and understandable for all users.
Adding confirmation notifications have definitely benefited the users experience and gave them a better understanding of stages of progress.
Despite making small changes to adding an expense, many users have still found the process confusing and not all were confident in what they were doing.
The second prioritisation matrix has been created, highlighting changes that would benefit users experience. From the second user testings, I have found that that new changes would require more effort, but could potentially solve the problem of users not being confident in the activity of adding a new task.
Navigation bar at the bottom has been changed to make the navigation more clear
The trip blocks have been made large to make the text inside more visible
Add button has been moved to the navigation bar, to make it easier for users to use
Expense blocks have been changed to make them more visible and easy to navigate around.
The trip description block has been made bigger to make the information more visible and less dense.
New
New
Old
Old
Final Mid Fidelity Design
This is the final prototype that has been created after a series of user testings. The 3rd prototypes attempts at fixing most identified problems noted by users. I believe that user testing has allowed me to identify and fix most usability issues and boost users experience of using this app.
Visual Identity
Brand Creation
Brand indentity
To start, I have created a list of adjectives that I would want my App to have. For me it was very important to keep the financial topic as simple and intuitive as possible, so that the main problem of arguments within groups can be avoided. At the same time I want to maintain an adventurous and young feel.
Mood Board
Based of the adjectives I wanted my app to have, I have constructed a mood board with UI elements. This mood board has an emphasis on bright blue colours and orange. Blue colour is associated with calmness and easiness which the product wants to put an accent on. When dealing with finances on a trip, it needs to be easy and simple and not raise issues between friends. Orange colour is associated with friendship and adventure which trips are all about.
From the mood board, I have extracted a neural white colour, a primary light blue colour and a secondary orange colour. These colours will be used across the app.
A mix of white colours will be used for background for ease and simplicity. White colour has an effect of making things plain and simple if used correctly.
I have also been inspired by big images which portray beautiful locations and friends, which gives a more lively feeling to the app.
Simple
Friendly
Welcoming
Adventurous
intuative
Logo
After mood board was created, I wanted to bring all the identified feeling to logo, which will allow me to create a strong brand identity.
It was important for the name of the App, to have carry a meaning so that users would be able to straight away tell what the app is about and be able to easy to remember. I have chosen the name Trip Split, which is easy to remember.
First of all, I have experimented with different Fonts. It it was important to bring simplicity and playful mood through the font. The choice has fallen on Kalan font, which looks very simple and friendly.
To give users a feeling of adventure, I have drawn a mountain, which suggests that App is about travel.
I have created a Word mark and an App icon. I have experimented with various ways of using colour and have decided to stay with blue background and orange clouds.
Final choice of Word mark and App Icon
High-fidelity Design
After developing brand Identity, it was time to bring the prototype to Hugh-Fidelity. With a developed colour pallet, I have injected colours in to the design to make CTA's and important information standout for the viewer and at the same time to break the design down. It was important to not make the design overcrowded, but rather simple and easy to navigate with the use of colour. Here is the final High Fidelity design.
View Prototype by visiting the link.
Communication
Website
In order to create visibility of my brand and market my new product, I have created a responsive website for Desktop and Mobile. It was important for the home page of my website to have a brief introduction to what the app is about and what features the product has. This way, visitors of the website would be able to quickly get information an therefore be more likely to download the app.
When creating the website, I have been inspired by big images and small drawings, which create a sense of adventure and fun. I have implemented those and the brand colour palette to maintain strong brand identity and inform the website viewers what Trip Split is about.
Multi-Platform Design
To further address users possible needs, I have though of a convenient how users could interact with an app from a different platform.
After conducting more user stories, I have decided that there could be a possibility of making notification sending process simpler and quicker and that this could be done through an Apple Watch. It would be convenient for users to be able to receive and send notification to users that owe them money. I have designed a process of sending a notification and a notification screen for user receiving the message from a friend.
Conclusion
Future of Trip Split
Next Steps
Trip Split is a strong product that is able to address and solve users needs, with regards to sharing expenses when travelling with friends.
The next short-term steps would be to develop full functionality of the app and complete a series of user testings that would allow us to get a better understanding of users perspective of the product and its functionality. Conducting user testings would allow us to uncover more usability issues that have not been identified and solved yet.
The long term plan for the app to send Trip Split to developers once full functionality will be developed and confirmed. While the application will be in development stage, It would be important to create Trip Split presence in the market by finishing the marketing website and creating social media for the brand. This would allow us to reach more audience and spread awareness of the issue that the product solves.
Key learnings
In this 10 weeks I have learned how to execute a multistage product from the perspective as a UX Designer and build my knowledge and skills across research, exploration and execution. This project has required allot of stages, so i was able to try myself in different roles and understand my strengths and weakness and learn from them as a UX and Ui Designer.
1) A big part of this project has been working with Problem solving skills, where I had to constantly reflect on my feedback and my findings in order to improve and explore other ways which i could take to get an even better result.
2) I have learned how to work with users and how important it is to gather information from users and research, rather than just making decisions based of your own thoughts.
3) At first, i have neglected importance of listening and testings with users, however I have learned that this is a vital part of being a UX designer, especially when working on long term projects. I have often found myself being stuck on certain stages of the project, but through communication and testings I was able to find new solutions and make decisions I would of been able to make before.