Time travel is now possible and Zeit is helping curious time travelers explore the past. Zeit wants to help as many time travelers easily book tours while time travelers want an easy way to find and book their tours.
I designed the experience from searching for a tour to booking the tour. I wanted to create an intuitive search and booking process so to reduce as much friction as possible while giving the travelers enough information about the trip and helping them feel secure through check out.
There are three ways to begin the search, including the menu, search bar, and advanced search filters. I chose to put these three search methods as it is common for many travel sites such as Expedia, National Geographic Expeditions, and Airbnb.
Since Zeit was a new business and time travel was a new activity, I wanted to make sure that the homepage showed different opportunities users could experience through the new service.
For the list of tours, I created cards so that users can easily look through different options, separating the text with images that related to the tour. I only wanted to add reviews and the price range because I found that those factors were the most important to many travelers.
Each tour description page would have a lot of information, detailing the itinerary, optional activities, tour guides, images, and review. I laid out the overview, price, and brief history to give the user a sense of the tour. I separated the other information into tabs so users could easily find the information they wanted to know.
I put the booking availability on a separate page from the tour description because I didn’t want to overload the user with information. It would include the most important information such as the dates, number of people, and the activities available on those days. The users would also be able to see the total price as price is an important factor in their decision making.
I wanted the reservation to be a simple and familiar process. They would only need to fill out their personal and payment information. I used a lot of white space to make the form and review page easy to scan. I also chose to keep the labels on top of the boxes to improve accessibility by helping screen readers navigate through the page.
The first iterations of designs for the search had a 50% completion rate because the navigation categories did not make sense and the navigation bar was difficult to see. With feedback, I changed the category names and the design of the navigation bar.
The booking process went smoothly with a 100% completion rate and took participants less than 2 minutes to complete the process. I should point out that the participants did not have to fill out any personal information, so the process was quicker than it would be in real time.
I learned how to apply the design thinking process to understand a problem and create a solution with design. This was the first project I took on as a designer, so I learned how to synthesize my research findings and translate them into wireframes and high-fidelity screens.
It’s okay to ‘copy’ other design patterns and components. I learned that this is okay because it’s better to use something that people are familiar with rather than try to reinvent the wheel.
I would add a second month view on the availability check. I realized that if a person was looking for available dates between two months, they would have a difficult time seeing all of the days they are choosing. I did draw inspiration from Airbnb’s check out process, but originally did not want to ‘copy’ its design.
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