Expedia Group
Integrating Social Media
January - May 2023
Wireframes
Journey Map
Research
Prototyping
Other Group Members:
Mikaela Thompson, Ananya Desai, Jennifer Du, Damaris Adeniji,
Jack Gerber, Andrew Dobler, Sean Levy, Toritsegbogwa Jakpa
Utilizing Instagram to further integrate Expedia Group's services into social media.
With a focus on Millennials, we created a prototype for an Expedia Group connection with Instagram to allow for collaboration, organization, and inspiration in trip planning.
Research Process
In order to decide which social media space had the most potential for successfully integrating Expedia's services for attention and use, we needed to first get a sense of the general social media realm regarding travel planning.
After doing some online searching and interviews, we first visually categorized our noted experiences.
Categorizing experiences on whiteboard with sticky notes, based on information gathered through research.
Key Focuses
1. People often trust family and friends for travel ideas rather than online influencers
2. Collaboration is important for some users during trip planning
3. Many people modify plans on the go, or leave open time to find events when they get to their destination instead of planning every detail beforehand
4. Lots of users make general Google searches regarding travel ideas or planning events instead of searching for specific activities or locations
Additionally, we concluded that Millennials would be the easiest user group to target, since they used social media, enjoyed traveling, and possessed the expenses to do so. Older generations may not use social media as often, and the younger generation (Gen Z) wasn't old enough to plan or afford travelling yet.
After we determined our user group, we decided to make a journey map with all the data we had gathered. This would help us see where the most potential was to make something useful that our users could utilize easily and successfully.
%20(1).jpg)
Extensive journey map created on whiteboard using information gathered through research.
Key Findings
1. Travel process is iterative and can be made on-the-fly
2. Beginning of the process would be easiest to focus on (inspiration, research, plan, book, track)
Wireframing
Since we had realized our focus (inspiration, research, planning & booking part of trip planning), we got started on making wireframes.
Keeping in mind Instagram's design system, we continued to iterate our wireframes on Figma.
Final Screens
Since we had realized our focus (inspiration, research, planning & booking part of trip planning), we got started on making wireframes.
Keeping in mind Instagram's design system, we continued to iterate our wireframes on Figma.
Here is our final solution. There are two flows.
1) Posting Flow:
After you've been on a wonderful vacation, you might be tempted to post your awesome photos on Instagram for everyone to see. Not only can you tag your friends and family in the photos, but with our Expedia extension, you can also tag multiple locations and events you attended! Here's what it looks like:
After you choose your photos and lay on a filter, Instagram takes you to this page to tag people, add music, and more. With our addition, Instagram would automatically use location-scanning features within your photos to determine where you went, and list those as potential places for you to tag.
Alternatively, you can also manually search for your bookings.
Regardless of how you choose to add your Expedia location, it will be applied to your post afterwards. There may also be Expedia reward points available!
2) Viewing/Exploring Flow:
Next time you're on Instagram, you may see that someone you know visited a vacation spot you've been wanting to visit for years. Being inspired, you decide you're going to save up to go there. Lucky for you, this person tagged their location with Expedia, so you have direct access to see exactly how much it costs.
Viewing a photo on Instagram which has an Expedia tag on it allows you to click on the tag to see more about the location or event.
Scrolling up allows you to see even more, such as photos from others who tagged the same location or event.
Pressing the button labeled "Add to Trip Board" allows you to access your trip boards on the Expedia app. You can save this location for later reference!
Pressing "View information" takes you directly to Expedia's website, so you can get even more details right from the source.
What I Learned + My Contributions
This project taught me SO much about research gathering and organizing, user journeys, and problem-solving. Throughout the course of this project, I also improved my Figma skills greatly.
With this being my first company-sponsored group project at Purdue, I'll admit I definitely got closer to truly understanding UX during this project. This team was so dedicated, and I'm incredibly grateful to have had such strong seniors in my group to guide me.
My specific contributions toward this project consist of primary (interviews) and secondary (online) research, involvement in the making of the journey map, ideating and brainstorming with the team (lots of rounds of sketching), and wireframing on Figma.
