Stay beside Your Dream destinations
Beside
Hotel Search app
Imagine empowering travellers to find the perfect accommodation by highlighting what truly matters: where they want to be, not just the beautiful room they are staying.
With Beside, users embark on a journey of exploration and convenience, finding the perfect accommodations tailored to their preferences on location and to easy travel plans at the location.
Find most loved landmarks
Location, Location Location
Save your future plans
View hotels by destination
The User Experience Design Process began with identifying the challenges and pain points users face in existing hotel search applications. It had to be clear what problem the app would solve. With research I wanted to understand users in the hotel booking process. Through Competitive Benchmarking and Usability Testing I got to examine how others have solved usability and monitor users in test situations.
My research was bringing forth users:
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needs
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behaviours
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motivations
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mental models and
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pain points.
Research helped me also to find the real problems to solve, enhance the user experience and make informed decisions.
Research
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Competitive Benchmarking: By comparing three leading hotel search applications, I pinpointed key areas for improvement as well as functional mental models.
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Usability testing interview, and Notes : Conducting a usability test and taking detailed notes from two interviews helped me understand user goals, behaviours, and pain points.
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The Professional Diploma in UX Design by UX Design Institute is a 10-module course that equipped me with the skills and knowledge of an UX professional in Research, Analytics and Concept Design.
The Design Process
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Affinity Diagram : Organising findings into an affinity diagram allowed me to identify common themes and prioritise user needs.
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Customer Journey Mapping: I mapped out the user journey to visualise the entire booking process. This revealed that the search results phase was particularly stressful for users due to overwhelming options.
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Armed with these insights, I outlined the ideal user path through the application and created hand sketches to visualize the interactions. This experimentation helped me implement the most effective mental models for my application.
By following my research results, flow diagram, and interaction design, producing the prototype became straightforward and reinforced by the design process.
Solution:
Excessive Clicks
Users had to make numerous clicks to access the search tool. The users often backtracked when hotels didn't meet their location criteria, indicating a need for better location-based search features.
Inconsistent UX Writing
The language and terminology varied, leading to confusion.
Disorganized Search Results
The hotel pictures had the main role, whereas location was the second highest criteria for the user after the price.
Filtered Search
Users prioritised the hotel's location over other factors, but they are still not using the filters and therefore leading to frustration when hotels didn't meet their location criteria.
Tedious Process
Users found the booking process lengthy, frequently needing to recheck their inputs.
Challenges:
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Flow Diagram: Outlining the ideal user path through the application.
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Interaction Design: Hand-sketching interaction designs. This step was crucial in designing a user-friendly interface that addressed the pain points identified earlier.
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Prototyping: Developing a medium-fidelity prototype in Figma. This process helped refine the initial sketches, ensuring the design was both intuitive and effective.
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Annotations to the Prototype: Detailed annotations to ensure clarity and collaboration. They also explain design decisions and provide a guide for the development team.
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For sure!
And now you have the world's top destinations at your fingertips, right from the start. Beside app lets you explore and choose from the best hotels across continents, countries, or cities, all showcased with stunning location pictures that inspire your wanderlust.
To simplify planning of your stay, select the attraction you want to be near, and our app will show you the best hotels in the vicinity. Each search result highlights the distance from your chosen attraction, and you can even view all options on a map for a comprehensive overview.
Start your journey to unforgettable stays!