Localized: Assignment 8 Jonathan Burkle, Tum Chaturapruek, Roslyn Cyrus, & Nick Tantivasadakarn

Problem & Solution Tourists seek local recommendations and experiences, but the barrier for locals to share what they know about their area is too high. To promote a more social, less superficial interaction, locals and tourists meet for coffee or a meal and go for a quick tour.

Heuristic Evaluation Fixes (Revised Design)

Severity 4 Issues Violation 6 (H4): On the Tour Guide Profile, it shows Jonathan’s current location, but the available tours are at a museum and mission district. It is not clear that the current location is the Meetup Location. Violation 13 (H10): The process of the tour itself is not clear to the tourist that they will meet the local at a different location from where the actual tour is. Violation 14 (H2): There is a difference between a meetup location and a tour location. When you browse for tours, you are given the tour location. However, that may mislead the user to think that they need to meet at the tour location. Meetup location confusion.

Severity 4 Issues Violation 23 (H1): On the Nearby Tours page, the cards seem to focus more on the kind of tour than getting a perspective from a nearby local. It does not even include the distance from the tourist’s location. How “nearby” are these tours? Fix: We now show distance We plan to add a filter eventually

Severity 4 Issues Violation 24 (H1): No context on reviews of guides or locals. Reciprocal reviews are critical to building trust in two-sided marketplaces like these, but these reviews need context beyond a simple star review. Fix: tapping on a star rating will now go to a review page with a list of all ratings/reviews. Since this is out of the scope of our tasks, this will not be shown in our prototype.

Severity 3 Issues Violation 1 (H2): On the Explore page, “Browse Nearby Tour Guides” and “Browse Nearby Tours” are too similar. Violation 2 (H8): When I first enter the Explore page, I would expect to just see a list of already available tours. The screen is like an unnecessary homepage.

Severity 3 Issues Violation 10 (H1): The description for the tour at Golden Gate Bridge lacks detail on the tour itself. What experience/info can Roslyn offer? Fix: This is really up to the profile creator to determine how to sell her skills, but we changed the text as an example.

Severity 3 Issues Violation 11 (H4): Are these individual tours only? People tend to travel in groups. It is likely that they’d all want to attend the same tour, but there isn’t any indication that there is a limit on people per tour. Fix: each tour has a max capacity of 2 (3 including the guide). If users want to go beyond this, they can do something custom with the tour guide via the messaging system.

Severity 3 Issues Violation 25 (H1): While purpose of booking tour button is clear for “browse nearby tours”, purpose of “message” tour guides is unclear. Do I request a tour from him? If so, this appears to have high friction, because there’s no standardized, third-party system for booking a tour. Fix: We made the message button a secondary color.

Severity 2 Issues Violation 30 (H2): When you book a tour, it stays on the same screen and the “cancel request” button shows up. People are used to having the screen change when a button is clicked. Furthermore, someone would probably want to look at other tours and wouldn’t immediately want to cancel the tour they just booked. Fix: Confirm page now goes to list of upcoming tours.

Additional Heuristic Evaluation Results

Issues Not Yet Implemented Violation 13 (H10): The process of the tour itself is not clear to the tourist that they will meet the local at a different location from where the actual tour is. Planned fix: On the tour detail page, the meeting location field will be replaced by an itinerary with the meet up, tour locations, and end location. The map will also feature all 3 locations as pins.

Discarded Issues Violation 15 (H4): I don’t know if locals would want to have their location visible for anyone to see. Justification: The location is the meetup location for the tour guide. They will be ready for tours only when at their proper meetup location. All discarded issues are lower than severity 4

Discarded Issues (contd.) Violation 20 (H4): You can message a local from the Tour Guide Profile, but you can’t from a regular Tour Details page. It may be good to think about whether or not the message function is necessary before a tour is requested/accepted. Justification: We decided to not allow users to message tour guides from the tour details page because it adds clutter and because users can access that from the tour guide's profile page. All discarded issues are lower than severity 4

Discarded Issues (contd.) Violation 28 (H1): In the “browse nearby tours” flow, users may not have enough context to be confident in their booking after requesting a tour. Users only see requested, but have no context on 1) how they can cancel their tour, and how late they can do that, 2) how long will it take for their tour to be approved, especially when looking for an in the moment experience with variable plans. Justification: This is only a proof of concept, and this problem is not related to our main tasks. However, If we have time, we might add a countdown for a free cancellation, and cancellation fine after the timer is up. All discarded issues are lower than severity 4

Discarded Issues (contd.) Violation 29 (H8): These stock icons are widely used, but their complexity hurts the streamlined design you may be looking to build. Further, these icons don’t correspond to the actual actions users take. Justification: We think there was confusion here; these icons are informational, not actionable. So we didn’t see anything to fix.

Discarded Issues (contd.) Violation 35 (H5): When you book a tour, all that changes is the “Tour Requested” shows up at the top. Users could accidentally click this, and a message would be sent to the tour guide requesting a tour. Justification: This is similar to another violation and already fixed.

Prototype Implementation Status

Tools Used Sketch InVision React Native

Implemented Features Core tasks implemented HE violation corrections Finding and requesting a tour (tourist side) HE violation corrections Violations 1, 2, 6, 10, 11, 14, 21, 23, 24, 25

Future Plans Core tasks to be implemented Future plans Setting a meetup location Earning perks (local) Future plans Polishing prototype

Wizard of Oz Techniques & Hard Coded Data Each large button is an image without separate native clickable elements Each description is an image rather than native text Only first tour is implemented/clickable Meeting location map is an image Perk level screen is an image (no native text) Tour guide profile page is an image (no native text) Messages are mocked up only

Demonstration

Summary Biggest changes Moving forward Home page now goes straight to exploring tours Making clear that the meetup location is different from where the tour is Explore page contains distance from current location Moving forward Showing local view Polishing application to look more like mock-ups

Questions