Planeta Travel App

Currently working at Planeta, I am part of a two UX designer team tasked with designing the mobile app.

What is the Planeta App?

At its core, Planeta is a peer-to-peer travel platform built on the principle of shared respect and personalized experience. The app enables users to harness the power of local knowledge by building a safe community of like-minded travelers and local guides who share a passion for integrity and sustainability.

Data Gathering and Initial Research

I started the data gathering process by looking at existing research findings, conducting user testing, and performing competitive analysis to identify opportunities to optimize the flow and make the experience as simple as possible.

Preliminary Findings:

Concerns:
From the user research, it became clear that our potential users' main concern was safety during their interaction with their expert guides and wanted to make sure verification of identity was in place.

Motivations:
Users are generally interested in expanding their horizons and experiencing new cultures.

Quotes from potential users:

Travelers:
"I want someone safe to show me around and do things with.
"I want someone to simplify my travel planning process."

Guides:
"I want to increase the number of travelers coming here.”

Flow:
With the competitive analysis we performed earlier in the process, I was able to make a representation of basic flows from many of our competitors to find out how we compared. My task was to look into different ways to optimize profile page flows and categorize dining experiences.

Sketches and wireframes

After completing the landscape analysis I started sketching and wireframing screens and quickly iterating after discussions with stakeholders. It was a quick way to establish consensus among all involved and get feedback on our first ideas.

Design Systems

I established patterns and initiated the creation of Design Systems by defining the Color Palette, Font Hierarchy, Grids, Spacing, etc. I also created Figma components and functionality.

Taxonomy

With the goal of establishing and organizing the personalized interests of users and guides, the team built a taxonomy that would organize them into categories and subcategories. I personally worked on the dining portion of this taxonomy by grouping the different dining experiences by ethnicity, location, diet, and style. This effort vastly improved the organization and findability of interests.

Site Map

I designed the architecture for the explorer and guide portions of the app. This overview helped the team trim unnecessary steps, prioritize vital interactions and keep the app structure clean and simple.

User Flows

Once the architecture was in place, it was much simpler to design the user flows. I was tasked with working on the guides' experience: determining entry points, defining the 'onboarding' and 'profile creation' flows.

Interactive Prototype:

After fleshing out layouts with colors and visual design, I created interactive Figma prototypes. These prototypes were crucial in our discussion of component functionality with stakeholders.