LONELY PLANET: USER GENERATED LISTS
CLIENT
LONELY PLANET
CONTRIBUTION
USER EXPERIENCE, VISUAL DESIGN
TEAM
BRAD POTTERBAUM, josh vogel, jonathan creamer, tom cunningham, chrissy sievers
STAKEHOLDERS
HEAD OF PRODUCT (LONELY PLANET)
A single feature for collecting, curating & sharing Lonely Planet content.
PROBLEM →
Lonely Planet’s diverse and extensive content offering is consumed by more than 120 million people every year. Currently, it’s not possible for users to collect and share content within Lonely Planet’s digital platform. Whether planning a trip or simply researching a new region, Lonely Planet’s unique content and expert community are what set it aside from the competition. Enter “User Collections”. UCs will enable users to collect and share content whether in the planning or post phases of their travels. Furthermore, UCs will allow users to leverage their friends and LP’s expert community for collaborative advice and feedback.
GOALS →
AS LONELY PLANET WE WANT TO...
- Better understand how users plan, structure & execute trips
- Learn what POI’s are popular among our certain types of users
- Build a POI (really any OP resource) popularity ranking system
- Learn what POI’s are paired with other POI’s
- Learn what POI’s are visited before and after other POI’s
- Get feedback whether a POI was a good or bad experience
- Publish our own collections inspired by users collection
- Derive new exciting trends and patterns from users collections
- Digest a new stream of user generated content into our publishing process
- Increase a user's engagement with our POI’s
- Have a compelling reason for a user to create a Lonely Plannet account
AS A USER I WANT TO...
- Create a list to save and organize LP content
- Customize the list name
- Optionally add a description to the list
- See a map of all my list content
- Share a link with another user allowing to modify my list with me in real time
- See who is contributing to my list
- View all my public and private lists
- Find other user lists throughout LP.com
- Make my list private or public
- Make a copy of someone else's list. With a “Save to my lists” action
- Delete my list
- Add X to a list form X detail page
- Add X to a list form X list page
- Add X to a list from within the list itself
- Give feedback on X from within the list
- Add a note/tip/caption to a list item
- Remove a list item
- Reorder list items
- Check off a list item
- Add suggested content
- Share my list to a Thorn Tree thread to get expert advice from the community
TARGET AUDIENCE →
Every month, we have millions of visitors in our forums and closed groups where travelers explicitly declare their interests, opinions and engage in very deep and meaningful conversations. These are adventurous travelers who want to live like a native. They are curious about the politics and culture of a destination and are more likely to go hang out with the locals than relax with other tourists at a destination resort.
TRIP PLANNER
~18–35 years old and buy our books, use our digital apps and trust in our brand to provide the expertise that'll make their trip great.
ITERATION 1 →
We began every feature design by leveraging the existing Lonely Planet design system, "Backpack", and piecing workflows together as quickly as possible. Once we had high-level flows mocked-up we'd render them into a clickable protype and get them in front of users.
CREATING A LIST VIA BOOKMARKING A POI FOR THE FIRST TIME
There were a few entry points for creating or adding to a list that we pinpointed. The majority of organic traffic came to our point of interest pages through Google Search. This gave us a great starting point.
EDITING A LIST
We knew that we wanted "Collections" to feel highly personal and customizable. This would help us recreate the personal touch that users were already giving their lists within the Thorn Tree forum.
ITERATION 1: USER TESTING →
WHAT WE LEARNED →
SORTING
Nearly all users wanted the ability to sort their lists by data, alphabetial, etc. Users expressed wanting to have a "timestamp" indicating when they bookmarked these POIs.
EDITING
Users tried interacting directly with the list item's to manipulate them. They felt that our batch edit solution was outdated and their secondary choice for deleting items. People also felt that having to hit "edit created too many steps to simply delete something.
"RECOMMENDATIONS" ORGANIZATION
Users revealed that the language around the titles of the pages are too vague and suggested something clearer such as "My Recommendations". They also found it odd that their "recommendations" organization defaulted to categories vs most recent. Additionally, users wanted a "timestamp" indicating when they made these recommendations and the option to "un-recommend" directly from the list.
ITERATION 2 →
The first round of testing provided a ton of valuable feedback to riff on a second iteration. Much of the qualitative feedback also directly nodded towards features that could enrichen the experience as a whole.
COLLABORATION AND PRIVACY
Protecting the privacy of our users is always a top priority though the goal was bringing these user generated lists into the broader experience.
NOTES AND "CHECK OFF"
We gauged a few signals in the qualitative research done in the first iteration that alluded to users wanting to utilize lists as a "to-do".
MAP, TITLE, DESCRIPTION
Context is everything when it comes to planning. We iterated on quite a few versions of how the interactive MapBox embeds could be brought into the lists.
ITERATION 2: USER TESTING →
WHAT WE LEARNED →
MAP, TITLE, DESCRIPTION
Users found the map invaluable in understanding the location and proximity to other POI's during planning. This helped them save time by planning to visit nearby attractions sequentially. Additionally, users thought to leverage the list title as their primary descriptor rather than associating additional text.
POI NOTES AND "CHECK OFF"
This was clearly the star of the show. Users indicated they would want a way to add some kind of contextual note to each place. They wanted this to both elaborate on "why this place" and "what to do" at this POI. All users also indicated that they would like the ability to "check off" list items.
COLLABORATION AND PRIVACY
The majority of the users assumed that lists would be "Public" by default. Though users were comfortable with this, they all said that they would like the ability to toggle between "Public" and "Private.
WHAT WE CREATED →
After translating, documenting and discussing the research with the broader team we made an informed plan of action for how to proceed. This began with addressing many of the issues we discovered in testing and playing with the many variations we were able to come up with.
DISCOVERING NEW FEATURES
The new feature was primarily located on content-rich pages. We wanted to ensure discoverability by utilizing tool tips to help the user identify and understand the concept and sequance of steps.
BRINGING CONTEXT INTO LISTS
The differentiator was always the unique experience, opinions and tips that Lonely Planet users had to offer. We decided to implement the coupling of "notes" with each list item to bring their voice center stage.
SHARING LISTS
Word of mouth is everything. We wanted to make lists easily sharable whether creating for yourself, a friend or simply doing research.
EDITING LISTS
Lists needed to be flexible and easy to edit. We kept controls local to each item while allowing global, in-line edits.
DELETING LISTS
Lists are just as easy to edit as they are to delete.
CREATING LISTS FROM A POINT OF INTEREST
We made sure that the pattern for saving to a list was consistent across all pages.
CREATING LISTS FROM "MY LISTS" WITHIN THE USER PROFILE
Many users already knew the type of list that they wanted to create as many of the conversations and recommendations happened in Thorn Tree. We created the ability for a user to dive right into creating their list on the site via their profile.
ADDING POINTS OF INTEREST DIRECTLY FROM LISTS
Often times, users already had a few things in mind that they wanted to add to a new list from the get-go. We created a workflow that allowed users to add directly to the list via an in-line global search.
