Sonder

Designing a responsive travel website for multiverse travel

My Role: Research, UX, UI

Note: This is a Designlab conceptual case study

00. First Some Preliminary Thoughts

For a newly created industry, what industry could I compare dimension travel with and would be Sonder's closest competitors?
How can I understand user pain points with the process of booking a normal trip and apply to Sonder?
What values and qualities is Sonder projecting and how do I encompass this later into my design?

01. User Research and Insights

Taking the opportunity and preliminary thoughts into consideration, I began the design process by conducting research which was separated into two areas:

Who are the closest competitors?

The closest competitors to this new industry are companies in the space travel industry. As space travel is still for the top 1%, I also spent time researching travel industry companies that the general public uses.

User travel habits and processes

I conducted interviews with five participants to deeply understand the experience of booking travel (whether they use a travel agent, group travel, self-research, websites used, etc.) and also what they find frustrating or enjoyable about the experience on the websites they used.

My target participants traveled at least once a year, were part of the millennial generation and has some inclination to be diverse and adventurous when they go on trips.

Simple UI

Participants value simplicity and avoided sites like Expedia and Priceline because of distracting UI and ads.

Adventurous

Most of the participants had a high level of risk-taking

Travel Company

Travel companies were used by some participants when a location seemed complex to self-research

Best Value

Participants were not on a tight budget but the goal was to have the best possible trip

Fresh Experiences

No “cookie-cutter” trips. Wanted a new and different vacation each time a trip was planned

Who is the main user?

The main persona was developed to keep in mind for the remainder of the project

02. Define and Design

What should this website include?

The user’s goal is to ultimately book a trip so this was the main task but a user could also want to explore around and understand more about dimension travel or create an account.

Building on top of the skeleton

From the customer interviews, having a number of filters was very important, as was a simple UI, and enticing imagery. Wireframes for the main pages include: home, search and dimension

Designing the visual aspect

Sonder felt like it should be futuristic, contemporary, unknown and abstract as dimension travel is unknown but enticing. I wanted the colors to reflect these qualities and chose neon type of shades. Similarly, the font needed to be minimalist and angular.

03. Testing and Final Iteration

The main three tasks to test were (1) utilizing filters to narrow down a trip to book, (2) selecting the month for the trip and the number of people going on the trip, and (3) finally booking the trip and purchasing it.

My testing had a few key takeaways:
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"More Filters" could be improved with clarity on the specific filters present or adding more filters as there were only currently two
The idea is that trips are already planned and abide by strict dates and lengths. This wasn't clear as participants thought that any trip selected would fit into their window of availability
Wasn't a lot of options for payment or timing of payment. The initial checkout page had payment by credit card and payment in full already selected without showing any other options

I incorporated these takeaways into my final iteration below.

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Final Thoughts

If I had more time I would build out the flow for the user to register an account, the dashboard for the account and general informational pages about dimension travel. However, with the time spent on the project, overall goal of creating an efficient and clean design with straightforward patterns for the user to book a trip was completed.