Savanah Bao

Savanah Bao works as a graphic designer for an advertising firm. She is someone who knows what she wants; she's finally found a work environment she enjoys, after hopping around for several years. She is 36 and single, living in a condo in Boston with her two cats named Annie and George, both female. Savanah is a vegetarian. She tells bad jokes, but her friends laugh anyway. Her favorite artist is Paul Klee.

Savanah has two weeks of vacation every year. Most of her vacations are spent visiting her parents in Syracuse, NY. When she travels she enjoys dining out, shopping and visiting the main cultural sites. This time, she's planning a trip to a city with her college roomate. They are deciding between Los Angeles and San Francisco. She usually just goes to a bookstore and flips through a few guidebooks and chooses the one with the best information, but during her down time at work, she's decided to browse the web to see what's available. She prefers to stay in mid-range hotels close to the sites, will splurge on a few meals out, and perhaps try to find a show or music event to attend. She makes an effort to hit all the major sites when she travels. She is concerned about safety while traveling.

• Wants to have fun
  
• Not to feel stupid or frustrated
  
• To gather information and plan her trip pre-departure.
  
• To find out as much as possible about her chosen destination to plan accordingly for her
  time there.
  
• Wants to know what are the 'must-sees' or top sights to visit in a chosen place, she will
  prioritize but will want to see as many of these places as she can squeeze in.
  
• Although she hopes to avoid the unexpected, she wants to have enough information to
  deal with the any surprises, especially the unpleasant ones.
  
• Wants enough information to allow for some flexibility in her plans, but does not have the
  time to wander around lost.
  
• Having just the information she needs, and only the information she needs.

[Explores TraveLite, creates an account, starts a new guide, saves it]

Savannah is sitting at her computer at work on a slow afternoon. Tired of lugging around her heavy datebook, Savannah just bought a Handspring Visor and is interested in trying out new applications. She is planning a 10-day trip with her college roommate Alison to San Francisco, and is having trouble finding a guide just targeted to that city in her local bookstores in Boston. (Since they will be in the city for 10 days, they may have some time to take some day trips too.) She was thinking about buying a guide online from Amazon, but hesitated because she can't flip through the different guides and decide which one she wants to buy, like she can in a bookstore. Last night she saw an item in Newsweek about customized travel guides for PDAs. A PDA-based travel guide might be just the solution, plus, just the thing to get her into using her new Visor. Savannah does a Yahoo! search to find the TraveLite website, and takes a look around. She has questions like: Where does the TL guide content come from? Does TL cover any destinations I am interested in? How do I make my own guide? How much does a TL guide cost? Can I try out a guide on my Visor for free? She is interested in finding out more about what is available before she takes the time to create an account, so she "takes a tour" which shows her how the TraveLite works, what's available, and what the benefits are. She makes a note to download the "free trial" guide later to try it out on her Visor at home.

After "taking the tour", Savannah decides she likes the idea, and wants to try making a guide of her own to check out the process for herself. [Although she's not required to yet], she creates an account for herself, using her email address and a password she uses on most websites where registration is involved.

She starts a new guide for the destination San Francisco. She chooses what kinds of information she wants in her guide: background, accommodations, dining, attractions/sights, activities, shopping, entertainment, etc. She decides she wants history about the city, along with information about it's literary background, and arts & culture, but not information for foreign visitors, like language, customs, currency, visas, etc. She wants information about accommodations, dining, attractions & sights, and entertainment as well. (She can always change her mind about these later.)

First she goes to accommodations and researches this information. She's looking for a nice, comfortable place close to downtown, mid-range in price, and in a safe area. She realizes that she needs to also look at some basic information to determine if the downtown area is safe, or even close to the types of things she wants to do. She looks through the overview information for the downtown area.

Satisfied, she returns to accommodations. She finds hotels based on what's important to her and looks at detailed information for some, to confirm they meet her needs. Finding a number that look appropriate, she adds them to her guide.

She moves on to food & dining and looks through the options. She knows that neither she nor her friend can afford to dine out at expensive restaurants most of the time, so she chooses the less expensive budget options. She looks for only vegetarian restaurants, but then remembers that her friend is not a vegetarian, and changes that. Knowing her friend's tastes, she eliminates all Chinese or seafood restaurants, along with steakhouses, since they likely won't have a lot she can eat. They want only non-smoking restaurants, since her friend is very sensitive to smoke. She looks again at her restaurants and, satisfied, saves them to her guide. She also adds a few well-recommended higher-end restaurants that meet their needs, just in case they decide to splurge once or twice.

At any time she can choose to see a preview of the guide she's building, including which categories she's selected, what she's chosen so far, and the cost of the guide.

Then she looks through sights & attractions. She's interested in the "top" or "must see" sights, but she also wants to find a few "hidden gems" to get a feel for the city. She already has an idea of some things she wants to do or see, such as riding the cable cars, Fisherman's Wharf, Chinatown, the Golden Gate Bridge, the SF MOMA, and Golden Gate Park. She adds these items to her guide, along with a few others that look interesting.

As she is looking through the attractions, one of her colleagues calls to ask her if she would mind sitting in on an impromptu design review. Savannah agrees, because enjoys the creative participation of these reviews, and she's happy to have something work-related to do. She saves her San Francisco guide to return to it later.