ROAM:
An Interactive Map

Opportunity

Solution

'ROAM' is a tourism startup with a digital platform. Offering an Interactive Map feature on their website, ROAM aims to enhance a tourist's trip planning experience by,

• Making information more structured, engaging and absorbable.
• Giving travelers the autonomy to plan trips more independently.

Impact

The interactive map feature on ROAM's website empowers users to plan their own trips on the platform, resulting in:

• Projected 20% increase in user engagement time.
• Enhanced operational efficiency, reducing consultants' workload.

Key Features

#1: More structured and absorbable information on map

The map features intricately designed destination markers, that:

• Present location information in an easily recognizable and engaging manner.
• Provides overview of useful information like experience type, difficulty level.
• Leads to a detailed experience information page.

#2: Giving users the power to plan their trips independently

When enabled, the 'Explore Routes' mode lets users:

• Select different markers to build an itinerary.
• View difficulty-color-coded routes to destinations
• Select experiences according to their preferences.

Design Process Details

Project Background

'ROAM' is a tourism startup that aims to promote Pakistan's tourism by helping both local and international travelers discover memorable experiences. With the shift to digital, their main goal became improve information access and engaging users on their platform.
In this context, my role as a UX Designer focused on reimagining the experience of travelers planning their trips, ensuring alignment with ROAM's business goals. For this, I proposed implementation of an interactive map feature on the platform.

User Research

• Primary Research: Interviews with users (travelers) & tour consultants in ROAM's team
• Literature Review: Books and travel guides e.g. 'Pakistan Trekking Guide' & 'Pakistan Handbook' by Isabel Shaw
• Experiential Research: Planning and embarking on trips ourselves to get first hand experience as a tourist

There's a noticeable lack of comprehensive and beginner-friendly guidance for travelers.

Discovering Insights

How Might We...

• ...transform vast amounts of information into interactive and playful visual experiences for users?

Design Feature: Interactive Trip Planning Map
Create an interactive map using Mapbox that displays all the essential information a tourist needs to plan their trip. This map will help users visualize their journey better by providing an intuitive, engaging, and user-friendly interface.

Design Feature: Highlighting Adventure Experiences
Integrated location markers throughout the interactive map to showcase tourist destinations and notable places to visit in a specific area.
These Adventure Markers are meticulously designed to provide the most essential information about each destination, drawing from user feedback and multiple iterations to ensure accuracy and relevance.

Each Adventure Markers opens up an Experience Page that provides details of the destination.

How Might We...

• ...enhance user engagement in the trip planning process and provide them with greater control over their journey?

Design Feature: Building Personalized Itineraries
With the ‘Explore Routes’ feature, users can effortlessly create personalized itineraries. By selecting multiple destinations on the interactive map, users can visualize the optimal routes between them. Users can easily remove or reorder destinations in their itinerary list to suit their preferences and plans.

User Feedback and Iterations

Designing the location markers

User Feedback
During the later stages of our testing, we discovered that some users had specific destinations in mind for their itineraries but faced challenges locating these places on the map. To address this, we introduced an advanced search and filter feature on the map home screen. This enhancement empowers users to have greater control and flexibility in their trip planning.

Next Steps

Based on user feedback and inter-team communications, we have identified several features for future iterations of the platform to enhance user experience and functionality:

• Making the Explore Routes feature more powerful by:
• Including detailed information about the modes of transportation connecting the destinations in the user’s itinerary.
• Introducing a feature that allows users to share their created itineraries with others or with the travel team at ROAM for consultation.
• Highlight important places like airports on the map with customized icons, to give users better idea of travel landscape.