Kuoni

Overview

Kuoni is a tailor made travel agency that helps clients plan plan luxury trips all over the world. As of right now, all of Kuoni’s interactions between the travel expert and the client happen over the phone. They plan to launch an online platform that allows the client to view their budget and itinerary, and leave comments for the travel expert.

 
 

Challenges

  • Maintain the already existing UI on the Kuoni website

  • Understand the best way for clients to leave feedback on their itinerary for their travel expert

  • Understand pain points for those who use travel agencies

Research

SECONDARY RESEARCH

I first implemented secondary research in which I examined the websites of competitors of Kuoni (Zicasso, Audley, Intrepid, and self booking) to better understand the travel agency market. While most of these competitors had a similar strong UX and UI to Kuoni, most shared a set of similar flaws. There was a lack of online presence that allowed users to interact with their travel expert through online or make edits to their itinerary and budget. I believed that I could design a feature for Kuoni that would fill this gap.

 

INTERVIEWS

To better understand the needs and frustrations of people using tailor-made travel agencies and to test my hypothesis, I conducted user interviews with potential users of Kuoni who fulfilled the requirements that I had established. Using the interview guide I made, I asked each participant a set of questions regarding their travel experiences with, both with and without an agency, as well as what influences their decision to book a trip. As a result of these interviews, I found that travel experts don’t always listen to the customer’s needs and the inability to interact with a travel expert outside of a phone call can be immensely frustrating. Working with the same travel expert throughout the planning and booking process and being able to easily communicate with the travel expert is critical to a pain free travel experience.

MOVING FORWARD

Based on these findings, I ultimately decided that the online presence feature being added to Kuoni’s already existing website and brand should include: 

  • An alternative method to communicating with the customer’s designated travel expert

  • The ability to change or make edits to the itinerary or budget

  • A design that easily allows the customer to interact with their travel expert and view their itinerary and budget

 

Persona

As a result of the data I collected from my research, I developed the persona of Kathy Brown. Kathy is a pharmaceutical sales representative for a large healthcare company. She travels frequently for work but often books her accommodations and flights herself, so for her 30th anniversary with her husband she decided to use Kuoni to help plan a vacation. This persona supplied a constant reminder throughout the design process of the characteristics of the type of person who would utilize this online on the Kuoni website. When designing this feature for a user such as Kathy, it was important to remember necessary elements such as multiple methods of communication, the ability to make edits and suggestions to the budget and itinerary, and a method of notifying the user when their travel expert has made changes.

 
 
 

Interaction Design

Using the findings this far, I prioritized features of Kuoni into two different tasks flow. The first depicts the user leaving a comment on for the travel expert regarding the itinerary and submitting the comment. The second task flow depicts the user viewing that a suggested change made by the travel expert and accepting the change. Mapping out these task flows allowed me to better understand questions such as what information would a user need to decide whether or not they are happy with their itinerary or what is the best way to interact with their travel expert online? I used this information to determine what pages would need to be designed while wireframing.

The key element of the task flows that I came across in my research was how can the user communicate with their travel expert when they are unhappy with their budget or itinerary. The user needed to be able to tell the travel expert when they wanted something changed and the travel expert needed to be able to show alternative options and let the user know when changes had been made. This open communication between customer and travel expert was a choice that I wanted to have available to users.

Information Architecture

Once the research was complete, I developed a site map to help me visualize what pages and elements needed to be created for the online feature for Kuoni. Research showed me that people want to be able to view and make edits to their budget and itinerary online as well as view each of these components broken down into subcategories (flights, lodging, transportation, food, and activities).

 

Wireframing

All the while keeping my task flow in mind, I designed low-fidelity wireframes for the pages that the user would come across while entering the new Kuoni online presence and accepting a change made to the itinerary. I showed the process of a user navigating to their itinerary, view the change made by their travel expert, and accept the change made. The most challenging part of designing these wireframes was ensuring that my designs matched the already existing style. I made an initial set of designs but ultimately decided to go with an alternative design and layout that better reflected the Kuoni brand.

Branding

Due to the fact that Kuoni already had an existing brand, I didn’t have to do any logo design or choose typefaces and colors. I did, however, condense all these UI elements into a UI kit so that I effectively mirror Kuoni’s brand in my own personal designs.

User Interface Design

Using the UI kit as reference, I created hi-fidelity responsive wireframes and built a prototype using Figma to show the process of a user viewing their full itinerary, reviewing a change made by their travel expert, and accepting the change.

 

Usability Testing

Using the prototype I created with Figma, I had a total of 2 participants work through the flow of the prototype. My main goals were to:

  • Exam how users navigate the site and perform given tasks

  • Establish whether or not users can successfully accomplish the tasks with ease

  • Identify any areas of the site that are confusing or inconsistent

 

Key Findings

  • There is often wiggle room when it comes to a budget

  • Customers require consistency when it comes to their travel expert

  • Customers would like more than one method of contacitng their travel expert

  • There is a large opportunity for travel agencies to provide more resources online

 

Next Steps

Because I only designed select pages for a desktop/laptop, next steps would be to complete other pages of the budget and itinerary as well as develop a mobile friendly version. This would allow users to view their itinerary on thier phone while traveling. Once completed, I would perform more usability testing to generate more feedback prior to handing off the deisng to a developer.