Design Sprint- Make My Trip website Redesign

The Bout: Sprint for a hassle-free

travel experience.

Trying to keep a normal life during the pandemic has been quite challenging especially when all the communication one has is through wired cell phones and laptops within a confined space, yet students like us all over the world who are studying face a new challenge, and this is our case.

We were initially flabbergasted on the thought of working as a team considering the fact we were all at our homes stretching from Kerala to Nashik to Nagpur to Pune and Mumbai! This course was conducted by Mrs. Nikita Kanade- Wagh ma’am, the founder and CEO of Viniage Design. She was the design sprint facilitator and she did an amazing job taking a set of confused 38 students through the entire course smoothly! Initially, we had had a lot of questions float by when Nikita ma’am had introduced this subject ….

“How are we going to be able to learn a methodology that has never been taught remotely?”

“How are we going to stay connected for so long with our given internet services?”

“How are we going to get along well with these new team members?”

“What is going on?!”

This is the Design Sprint Challenge! Not getting too much into details but quite frankly it felt more like a board game than an assignment.

We’re going to talk about our learning experience in the new remote world of Design Sprint. We are going to take you through a brief journey through what we learned from this course. So here we go, fasten your seat belts, please!

Round 01 -The Sprint Mania

In order to answer these, we had to turn ourselves into a traveler and fit into their shoes. Well, the phrase does make sense in this context, ha! So our next step was, in design thinking terms, to empathize. Yeah yeah, we knew it wasn’t the best time to travel or to develop a service that helps travelers to explore the world right now. But hope! The thing that drives us all forward through good and bad times. Like the rest of the world right now even we kept telling ourselves that this too shall pass and when it is all back to normal, here’s a beautiful service to help you explore the world in a new manner! Keeping the woes aside, we got ready to plan our hypothetical, virtual trip!

Flights did not take off but ideas did!! In the form of post-its! And there was a lot of it all over our art-board. The cursors moving around on the artboard seemed fun and cute. It felt like a different version of the Sims, haha! No? Okay. Fine.

Round 02 -The Challenges

This brought us to the challenges that we had to overcome. And we were quite confident about overcoming them.

The challenges came in the form of questions like

1. How do we make the traveler discover the regional delicacies of the region they’re traveling to?

2. How do we add this as a new feature on the Make My Trip website?

3. How to provide a total customization option as per their varied preferences?

There goes the timer and along goes our brains trying to figure out solutions. Ideas came out firing left, right, and center. (Guess the timer was doing its thing to us).The ideas were collated and then came about the most fun part of the process: Voting!

We went around virtually over every idea, read them carefully, and placed our best votes. The decider had the final say and we were glad that the final chosen ideas were all aligned to the integrated mentality of the whole team.

Timer up and we’re done with the task too!

Round 03 - How Might We?

After the 3 step sketch, we did a “Heat map” voting where all the team members except the decider had to vote on a solution sketch which they felt was appropriate. All the team members received unlimited red dots to vote for whichever idea or concept they liked. Later the decider received the liberty to use one large green dot to vote for the concept he thinks is correct.

The concept chosen to go further was “MAKE MY TRIP MEMORABLE”.

The next step was to create a user test flow from the selected solution sketch. This was a task where all the team members wrote the user test flow according to themselves including the decider and then through voting, we selected one user test flow which we wanted to take ahead to build the final prototype.

Round 04 -The First Building Blocks

Hello Prototyping!

This was already getting interesting. Excitedly we went on to our prototyping ideas. We had to get people to know about such a feature being offered through our

website and thus required marketing. We also had to add the service as a pop-up or a “what’s new” feature on the website. Now since we were offering a detailed option for the regional delicacies, we would love to take care of your travel and accommodation as well! Another timer goes off and lo here comes the post-its flying around the whiteboard! We had to plan out the prototype mainly considering these factors. We were on it like bees around the beehive. In a jiffy, ideas were up and about yet again. Prototyping process seemed fun and we had excitement & curiosity creeping in the back of the head about what was coming next.

Round 5 -User Testing Begins!

After making a workable prototype now it was time to test it with real-time users! So we booked a set of 5 users and had a Zoom call with them where they saw the prototype and navigated through it. We got tons of valuable insights from our first testing, some things worked some didn’t. But it paved way for us to make a more efficient prototype later.

Round 06 -Back To Prototyping!

The user testing and iteration process were slightly tiring but we didn’t lose hope and motivation. And it was worth it; now we have a better and clear cut idea as to what to do.

Round 07 -User Testing Returns!

The user testing and iteration process were slightly tiring but we didn’t lose hope and motivation. And it was worth it; now we have a better and clear cut idea as to what to do.

Iterations, iterations, and more iterations… After we were done addressing all the issues gathered from user testing, the website finally looked like it has taken good shape. Is everything sorted and good to go? Maybe not. There’s always the option to come back and make more iterations. For now, we really liked what we had made. Our precious! What have we given the world? A hassle-free service where you can customize your whole trip based on your personal preferences and also get authorized and authentic regional delicacies that you could explore during your trip! Who’s excited? We definitely are.

Future Impact

The world is back to normal. It’s time to start planning for all the pending trips now. Alright, we’ve got you covered. Apart from the travel and accommodation guess what else is sorted. The best local delicacies of your destination! That too with the authorized safety mark! Yes, that’s right you don’t have to feel paranoid about the hygiene, that’s our promise.

After all of the uncertainty, tension, and uneasiness during the quarantine you deserve a break and we’re here to give you the perfect one! Enjoy a hassle-free experience of trip booking and explore and discover local delicacies with us!

We Did It on Time ( Conclusion )

All throughout the course, the team worked really hard and smart. The thought of working remotely seemed to be a herculean task initially but everyone got together and pitched in their parts. This made the whole process a very fun activity rather than a tedious process.

Through the days we had a lot of issues like power-cuts, network issues, daily data expiry… The list can go on… But together we overcame every single problem like a boss! Overall we had a very enjoyable time and a wonderful learning experience together as a package!

We strived very hard to make the traveling a memorable experience for the travelers. Closing in on the project, we realized that through the entire course of the project we created a lot of memorable experiences for ourselves! This one for the team! Cheers!

Learnings

The design sprint articulates the group to give out the maximum output in minimum time without any confusion and most importantly with every single person being heard.

Nothing is ever wrong or right in a design, the final decision maker is our user.

We got to learn about new software like Figma & Miro.

It was fun working together on one platform from every remote region.