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In
the design process for the interface of this project, we used
personas based on the main types of travelers identified during
our needs analysis: Business, Leisure, and Adventure. For
all these travelers, a primary goal is to have just the information
they need but without any excess. Each, however, has a different
tolerance for the amount of time and effort they are willing
to invest.
Therefore,
for each of these personas, we developed goals, a scenario
and task flow to aid us in designing the interface for optimal
usability for all three personas.
Primary
persona: Leisure Traveler
Our primary persona is the leisure traveler or tourist.
As the person with the least experience traveling but a high
need for information, she falls in between these two types.
She needs both the basic travel information as well as extensive
listings of restaurants, excursions and where to find out
more information on current events. She will need more guidance
on what to do but will create a fairly well developed schedule
pre-departure. She prefers to avoid the unexpected but wants
to have enough information on hand to deal with any suprises
along the way. While she is willing to spend a fair amount
of time in researching her destination, she is not as willing
to invest as much effort as the adventure traveler. The tourist
is most likely to need both a breadth and depth of information
and to use a guide more intensely.
Business
Traveler
We chose the business traveler as the person with the
most frequent need to travel but the lowest need for information
and desire to research their destination. The business traveler
may use this service but in many cases would not find a lot
of value returned. In fact, he would probably prefer a pre-packaged
product to meet his need without any significant time investment.
This is an edge case for TraveLite.
Adventure
Traveler
The adventure traveler is also an edge case, but at the other
end of the spectrum. She has the greatest need and desire
to research a destination in preparation. As someone who travels
frequently, this person has learned the value of traveling
light and also knows what type of information she needs to
bring along. This is the type of person who would read through
as many resources as possible pre-departure and attempt to
winnow this down to the bare essentials she'll need on the
road. However most of her needs and goals are also met by
the tourist persona.
Scenarios
We
created a scenario for each of the above personas. The three
scenarios cover the range of tasks users will need to complete
with the TraveLite web application. While any of the three
personas might have occasion to use the site according to
any one of these scenarios at some point in their tenure of
using the site, we attempted to frame the scenarios around
typical task paths for each of the personas.
Evan:
needs to quickly download a guide for an emergency business
trip to LA. He logs in to his account, quickly chooses the
information he needs, purchases and downloads the guide and
heads for the airport.
Savannah:
is planning a trip to San Francisco on a slow afternoon at
work. She creates an account, begins building a guide and
saves it when she is called away by a colleague.
Charley:
is planning a Spring Break trip to the Bay Area between classes.
She logs in, opens a guide she has already started creating,
modifies it and saves it again before her next class.
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