Hop Trip

Defining problem. Research stage.

There is no resource to discover multi-destination travel plans with ratings and reviews. There is no platform for travelers and locals to monetize their experience and knowledge by sharing travel plans. So we wanted to create a way quickly book the trip, that can content multiple destinations. 

When I joined the team, it already had a list of assumptions and questions. To answer them, I conducted several interviews with potential users and travel agents. It was 20 min conversations and 10 min walking through some wireframes. We talked with people who traveled a lot and planned a lot of trips and people who booked trips through travel agencies before.

Based on interviews with users, I created the flow, how users deal with booking trips without our app. It helped me to understand better users needs: 

• Users spend a lot of time to book an itinerary

• The trip cost can vary dramatically, and it can affect users decision

• Users can need support not only with purchasing itinerary but also in the middle of the trip.

Goals:

• Any person with HopTrip application should be able to book an itinerary in less than an hour 

• Users who use HopTrip can see prices for the itineraries they are interested in.

• A user who booked a trip with HopTrip can get support from personal travel agent 24/7

Challenges

• Trust: In clear form explain new users, what app can do for them and what kind of support they will get;

  1. Create a seamless flow to book a trip, that could include flight, hotels, and car renting

  2. Provide users enough information to make the best choice

  I started by creating low fidelity mockups, so we could begin discussing information structure, flows, what we can, what we can't do with the team.

  Together with developers, product owners, and travel agents, we worked on wireframes to define the feature scope of work and plan developer's sprints.

After we all get on the same page, I could start to work on more detailed interactions and interface elements. I tested it with potential customers. Some minor were made based on user feedback and observations how people navigate. through the app. We launched pilot version and continue to improve the app based on metrics we had and users feedback.

Iterations

We reorganized groups of trips on the main page, personalized trips on the main page based on the user's location. We added more details about the trip to the trip details screen. We also added the feature "no need in hotel/flight/car" for people who didn't want to rent the whole package.

Results

Both travel agents and end users found this app super helpful. We got positive feedbacks from users and users recommended Hop Trip service to the friends.

In 2016 Google released Google trips and Hop Trip start up was shut down.

Retrospective

It was an interesting and complex project. I learned a lot about the travel domain, a complicated system of getting data. We did a lot to build trust with our users. I worked with a fantastic team of travelers and travel agents.

I wish we could do more testing with more people to understand people's needs more clearly. But our team got lucky, and we could conduct a lot of interviews with travel agents, who had insights from clients. I also see opportunities in releasing app partially instead of trying to release all at once.