KAYAK x Purdue
Project Duration
18
weeks
Team
8
UX Designers
Timeline
Jan - May
2024
My Role
User Research, Wireframing,
Interaction Design, Prototyping
The Context
​KAYAK is a metasearch engine for travel services that strives to help its customers experience the best travel expedite by finding the best flights, hotels, rental cars, and vacation packages.
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In collaboration with Purdue's UX department, KAYAK wanted to expand their traveling features to enhance their website's experience, specifically, their group travelling feature.
With a team 7 UX Design students, we were tasked to design a group travel feature for KAYAK's website.​
Before Screens of KAYAK's travelling platform
The Goals are to...
Investigate KAYAK's Current Features
Design a Group Traveling Feature
User Group
-
Millenials and Older Gen Z Travelling in Groups
Stakeholders
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KAYAK
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Travelers
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Travel Companies
Research
User Interviews
What are our users' priorities? Challenges?
We conducted user interviews on several Millenials and young Gen Z adults​ on their experience with group traveling. Learning what platforms they use, how they plan for group trips, etc.
"Challenges" is one of the manby categories that we investigated for people's group traveling experience.
Competitive Analysis
What can we learn from websites with similar functions?
To find more design opportunities and inspiration for group traveling features, our team evaluated several traveling websites with group planning features.
We looked at 8 similar sites (Airbnb, Expedia) to analyze.
Journey Maps
What are our users’ journeys when booking group travel?
In order to narrow down the focus of our deliverable, we outlined our users' group traveling experience, from planning all the way to ending the trip.
We found our main focus to be ​within the planning stage, where Budget, Dates, Location are all happening at the same time. Those three points effect each other but all three points have to be done to continue to the next part of the journey.
Heuristic Evaluation
What's the current experience of the website? What are some design opportunities?
To evaluate usability and key areas of improvement within the platform, we conducted a 20 minute exercise where we utilize the website to book domestic and international trips. With little to no introduction to the platform itself, we are to simulate the experience of a target user, before annotating our observations to generate insights.
The Solution
Introducing KAYAK's Group Travel Feature!
Create, plan, and save trips with ease, no matter if you're traveling alone or with a big group.
Invite collaborators to plan and view your trip itinerary,
including locations, dates, budget, and more.
Group Voting for Locations and Stays
To ensure locations are a fair and transparent agreement among the group, users will be able to search, add, and vote for each other's suggestions for locations, stays, and activities.
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The admin of the trip will be able to see the top-voted options and finalize a location with the given information.
Collaborative Calendars for Planning Dates
Coordinating dates is often hectic and confusing for our users!​
Collaborators will be able to search and add their available dates, making it easy to find shared availability.
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Budget Tracker and Expense Cacluations
Budgets were reported to be by far the biggest headaches for users. We created a budget tracker that sets/tracks a total budget, as well as each individual in the group.
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View my other work!
