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Millennial Tourist Needs
in International Travel
Budgeting and Itinerary Generation
to Improve the Millennial’s Travel Experience
About this Project
In this project, I present “Escapade”, a smartphone application which solves some of the major problems faced by budget travelers by generating daily itineraries, tracking travel expenses, and integrating existing technologies and services to help people save time, money and create a memorable travel experience.
Role
Sole UI/UX Designer- Discovery + User Research + Design + Testing + Prototyping
The Challenge
I’m a millennial, and I love to travel.
I struggle with navigating the sheer volume of websites for travel research to build a good travel itinerary, as well as sticking to a budget. The trouble is when I’m at my destination, I either play it too safe, or I spend too much.
Scouring the internet, I found I am not alone in these issues.
With many people experiencing this issue, my thoughts turned to how I could design a solution for those who love adventure and need also to account for their wallet?
In the United States the millennial generation is the generation most engaged in traveling abroad. The United Nations estimates that 300-350 million travelers are millennials and that millennials generate about $350 billion in annual tourism revenue.
Millennials as a whole struggle with significant debt. According to a poll conducted by The Atlantic in 2017, 67% of millennials stick to a budget, being very financially conscious. Furthermore, frugality can prevent flourishing tourism engagement.
With such a large populous influencing travel needing to stick to a budget, the question became, “how might we budget for the Millennial so they feel increased delight and engagement in travel?”
Affinity Analysis
The design thinking process was applied to this problem. As the sole designer, upon interviewing an initial 5 millennial budget travelers, and asking them about their travel habits, their pain points and their hopes,
I engaged in affinity and empathy mapping methodologies to better see commonalities and distinctions in the habits, needs, pain and desires of the representative users.
The top 4 user concerns which arose from engaging with the affinity mapping were as follows:
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Being able to stay within their budget
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Being able to keep record of their expenses while traveling
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Wanting the ability to explore their surroundings and feel a part of the local culture
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Being able to see their itinerary mapped out for them, knowing that they were efficiently navigating their terrain
Persona (Catastrophic Adventurer)
Meet Ryan. Ryan is a 35 year old avid app user who loves to travel, but is terrible at sticking to a budget and hates researching what he’s going to see/do on a trip. Ryan is what Jung calls an “Explorer.”
Explorers don’t like to be fenced in, and desire the freedom to find out who they are through exploring the world. Some of their greatest fears are getting trapped, conformity, and inner emptiness.
Explorers love to journey, seeking out and experiencing new things, and escaping from boredom.
Ryan has the following needs:
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Assistance in sticking to a budget
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To see where they are going
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To explore and not feel bogged down by research during travel time
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A sense of independence while being mindful of spending
How Might We Statements
Grappling with all the information extracted from user interviews and synthesized from the above methodologies, I asked the following questions to ascertain how to deliver a solution to our persona Ryan’s needs:
How might we help Ryan better visualize their daily flow?
How might we give Ryan access to authentic and local experiences?
How might we help Ryan be more time efficient?
How might we budget for Ryan to make travel more enjoyable?
The How might we statements led me to the following idea: Let’s create a travel app which makes the ability to stick to a budget effortless, and generate an itinerary based on user interest/need and proximity to their location.
The Competition
Market Competitor Analysis
The main competitor on the market is Wanderlog.
Wanderlog addresses these needs in particular ways, these being:

It allows one to import and manually create one’s own itinerary and budget.
Maps out the whole of the itinerary on Google maps.
Has blog articles internal to the app which recommend different places, cities, etc.
Does Wanderlog really address the needs of the user?
Wanderlog essentially allows you to import work the user has already done. Issues that arose when evaluating their app were:
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The individual to build an itinerary on their own, step by step (Which is very time consuming).
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The individual must manually insert expenses.
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Suggestions made for travel aren’t tailored to the individual- they are generic, popular choices only.
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The app is not intuitive– there’s a high learning curve for how to use the app optimally.
The Solution
MVP User Flow
The MVP became centered around offering something which smartly suggests experiences to the individual based on their interests, proximity and budget needs.

This gives Ryan the ability to engage more with the experiences of the trip itself and they can worry less about the cost and flow of their day.
Freedom to rearrange, explore and adapt the itinerary suggested.
Sketches, Wireframing
and Guerilla Testing
I created sketches for the main red routes of the MVP for the Escapade Travel App. This included generating an itinerary, which had the pricing attached to the experiences suggested. At the end of the main flow, there was a show with the total expenses tracked by the app for the day. This would be added to the budget record in the account section of the app.
Issues that arose during testing:
A page I had created with an extra button caused confusion among the participants. They felt the button from the previous page they’d clicked on should have taken them further along the itinerary generation flow.
Second issue: 2 out of 5 people struggled with the homepage. The task “please generate a complete itinerary for the trip you are on” caused confusion due to the copy written for the CTAs. One of the two users who chose “Start a New Trip” stated they hadn’t noticed the “Generate Itinerary” button.
Low Fidelity to High Fidelity Iterations​
I chose to design with a minimal and consistent use of palette colors and UI elements. In designing this app, I went through many iterations and ultimately these design choices are what I settled on, based on both inspiration from nature and from psychology.
Color Palette
The blue and white, I chose because of their connection to the vastness of the sky and ocean, which tend to be major visuals of any trip (flying, driving, and travel by boat– one sees the sky and the water).
The yellow I chose came from images of the sunrise and sunset.
Both the blues and yellows are light and refreshing in color and convey a sense of exploration and openness. These were important to me, as the persona I designed for is a Jungian explorer archetype. The dark text color and the white background were chosen off of the main blue.
Unique UI Elements
The elements I chose to continue with were a swiping card system (much like the Tinder and Bumble dating apps) for choosing one’s daily itinerary. This adds a level of gamification, and allows for the individual to have greater visual engagement with the imagery of the possible destinations. It also allows for choice, something users appreciate greatly in customizing their experiences.
Originally I had created buttons on the itinerary pages which were placed at the bottom of the screen, such as “edit”.
I replaced them with with item cards. This created greater context as to what the individual was editing. Now, when the person swipes the smaller itinerary card to the left, a “remove” option becomes visible. If the individual wanted to edit the whole itinerary, they could also press the back arrow button at the top of the screen. I made this decision because it simplifies form and function.
Also included in the smaller itinerary cards is a dropdown information window. If one were to tap on said card, one would have a bit of information presented to the individual regarding the destination.
Prototype and Testing
Link to Prototype Flows
I conducted 5 moderated usability tests for this round of testing with five different users. Tests were conducted in person and online via Zoom. The tests lasted 20-30 minutes long.
User Recruitment Methods
Users were recruited online via a screener administered by myself on various social media/networking platforms.
I completed 5 moderated tests. 3 were held in person at my work, and the other two 2 were held online. The goals were to test the red routes of the budget travel app Escapade, and to determine any major errors or flaws in design. The test script I drafted was used with each participant.
Goals
The objectives of conducting this usability test are as follow:
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What are the initial impressions the users have of the screens on the app?
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How do users navigate the screens when engaging in task flows?
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What usability issues are there with the red routes, if any?
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What is the learning curve of users engaging the app?
Tasks/Questions
From prototype flow 1 (Generate a Daily Itinerary):
Generate a daily itinerary on a theoretical trip to paris.
Delete an item from the itinerary
Find more information about an itinerary item.
How do people respond to the homescreen’s UI?
How do people respond to the organization of the prototype flow?
From prototype flow 2 (Leave a Review):
Leave a review of a cafe the user would theoretically have just attended.
Usability Test Screens from Round One
Usability Test Screens from Round Two
Results of Usability Testing Rounds
Issues fixed from the penultimate round of testing were as follows:
80% of people understood the swiping function for the generation of itinerary items, the other 20% hadn’t been exposed to that interaction before. From this I decided to include a pop up window which explained how to engage with the left-right swiping. 100% compliance occurred in the 2nd round of testing.
By the 2nd round of testing, testers had no issues with the program, only offered that perhaps some greater use of color could be engaged in the background. Overall testers described the prototype as easy to interact with and enjoyable.
The screens displayed on this page are the design variations prompted by user feedback from the second and first round of testing.
Further Thoughts
Next Steps
I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project because I love seeing what happens when people are able to fully immerse themselves in a new experience and be unburdened from the issues of daily life. I really think this MVP could help many overcome the difficulties of budgeting and planning their travel, and be more able to submerge themselves in the delight of experiencing an expansive sense of self through exploration.
The next steps in the design of this app would be to:
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Refine the filters of what experiences are being suggested to the user
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Expand the app to integrate the transportation tickets and hotel/lodging costs into the budget (decrease manual entry)
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Create a gamified means for two or more travel partners to build and share a dynamic itinerary
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Integrate safety information regarding Covid-19 and other outbreaks, as well as statistics of violence in an area in a manner that would gently inform the user of potential hazards.
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Source ADA compliant lodging, transportation and itineraries for those with physical needs.
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Integrate food suggestions based on the dietary needs of the individual (Gluten-Free, Celiac, etc.) based on gps proximity to the individual.
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