Problem
From the CSAT, customer complaints to Care, and the .com redesign research review, we had learned the iOS app was causing members to struggle. iOS app usage was dropping and many members had reported abandoning the app completely. But analytics also showed high mobile device usage, so device type was not the reason for low app usage.
Insights
Impact
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Made recommendations and facilitated prioritization of the iOS roadmap.
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The Design team started work on Trip Planning
Objectives
Research Goals and Questions
Understand how members are currently using the app
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Are they searching, booking, and planning trips from the app, or just certain tasks? (Why)
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How does the app support them (or not) throughout the full journey?
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Discover what members need from the app
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What are they not getting from the app that they wish they had?
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What are the most important things they wish they could do, or do better in the app?
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Recommend features for the iOS roadmap
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What should we prioritize now vs. later
Business Goals
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Increase iOS app usage
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Member Retention
User Goals
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Find, book, and plan trips seamlessly from their mobile devices
Methods
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Member Interviews
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Why this method: We wanted to learn more about how the app supports members throughout the finding/booking/planning a trip journey, and what they need the most.
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Workshop and Review from .com Redesign Work
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Why this method: We had done a lot of work on Trip Planning previously and again in the .com redesign effort. Trip planning also came up in the interviews as a top area of opportunity. So we wanted to involve more stakeholders and decide on what Trip Planning themes and features we should consider working on in the near future.
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CSAT Review
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Why this method: The CSAT brought back a lot of comments about the iOS app to consider.
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Heuristic Analysis
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Why this method: In the member interviews some usability issues with the current design came up. So we did a full heuristic analysis to assure we were capturing all areas where we could improve usability and design.
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T​op Themes:​
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Trip Planning - Members want more personalized itineraries
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Trip Planning - Members want to learn more about exciting things to do at the destination (before booking)
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Content - Accommodation information is buried/missing
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Self-Service - Members want to book trips when they want to, without relying on the Care team
Member Interviews
Member Interview for iOS Discovery.
"It felt like they were just randomly picking stuff. But when I go to a Virtuoso travel agent, they will go the extra mile and find out who's the best tour guide or what hotel I should stay at."
- Pass Member
There were a few gaps in the existing research throughout the member journey for iOS, so we thought it would be best to meet with some of our members and learn more.
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Who we interviewed:
7 Inspirato members (a mixture of the 2 subscriptions, Club and Pass), who have used the app in the past 2 weeks.
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How we recruited:
I sent out 50+ emails to members who I identified as frequent app users through Heap Analytics (use the app regularly at least once per week), asking for 30 minutes of their time to help us improve the app experience for a $100 gift card to the Inspirato store.
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How we synthesized results:
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I gave the PM the option to come to as many interviews as she wanted to, she really enjoyed being involved.
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I recorded all interviews with Grain and uploaded them in Dovetail.
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Then I transcribed the videos, tagged the transcriptions, and created reels to tell the story in a more powerful way.
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I shared the reels and a report with my recommendations with the Designer and PM on the project.
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I also shared the reels with the iOS Development team and they were so excited to have the opportunity to see real members talking about our product.
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Insights
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Members don't always use the Trip Planning Team service, because they feel there is a lack of personalization, communication struggles, and they want to start planning sooner than when the team reaches out.
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Even members who like to plan on their own, would appreciate some curated recommendations.
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Members who use the app primarily are using it to search for accommodations.
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Members sometimes struggle to compare accommodations and make decisions, because they need more information than what is listed.
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Members often want to read reviews and recommendations to decide where to go and what to do there, but they often don’t leave reviews. (We need more reviews from members in order to make it a meaningful tool, but the way we capture reviews takes too much time and is hard to find.)
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Not all members know accommodations can be booked through the app.
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Not all members know the itinerary can be accessed through the app.
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Top Themes
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Trip Planning - Itinerary/Personalization
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Trip Planning - Learn about what to do there
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Accommodation information is buried/missing
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Self-Service - Booking
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Redesign Research Review - Focus on Trip Planning
Because the app has it's own team of developers and with the amount of opportunities for the app, we decided to split iOS off from the rest of the .com redesign Future State Vision work, and begin tackling some of the problems in the app now. We found data suggesting that members are struggling with the app in a few different areas, Trip Planning being one of the most impactful, since it is one of the services that sets us apart from our competitors (Trip Planning also came up as an impactful area in the member interviews.)
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Trip Planning Workshop for iOS
We decided to repeat the Trip Planning workshop I had facilitated during the .com redesign project, but this time with only the opportunities that were iOS specific and had little to no dependencies. We also involved a different team of stakeholders, this time it was leadership on the Vacation Experience team.
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Goals of the workshop
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Hear the perspectives of the Vacation Experience team to help us make decisions on what to focus on first
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Include the Vacation Experience team in our process
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Results - What we should focus on:
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Help me learn about the destination, what to do there
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Help me plan a more personalized itinerary, when I want to start planning
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Helpful accommodation info is buried/ doesn’t exist
Trip Planning Workshop for iOS (partial)
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CSAT Review
Every year Customer Insights does a Customer Satisfaction Survey. This year they just asked an open-ended question about the digital experience, and there were a lot of iOS specific comments. This was the first clue that we needed to look further into the iOS challenges.
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Top Themes
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App Performance & Login
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Trip Planning
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Search/Nav/Filters
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Need Android
Heuristic Analysis & Analytics
In the member interviews some usability issues with the current design came up. I suggested doing a heuristic analysis so we could make sure we're capturing all areas where we could improve usability and design. 4 members of the team (a PM, Designer, Developer, and I) measured the current iOS experience against 10 Psychological Design Heuristics, by Susan Weinschenk. We also included some key analytics to our heuristic, so we had a better idea of where a larger percentage of our user base may be struggling.
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Top Heuristics
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#1 Users don't want to work/think
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#6 Hold onto User's attention
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#10 Unconscious processing matters - Visual System
Results
We took inventory of all quick design changes (increasing visibility of icons, improving layout, improving readability, etc.) we could do now, and what bigger changes we should consider for the future.
Recommendations
By triangulating different methods, and finding repeated themes, we were confident we understood what opportunities would be most impactful for members. I compiled a list of recommendations and presented to the iOS Development team. We spent some time assigning level of effort and impact to each recommendation, and the team chose 3 top opportunities that would most likely be accomplished within the next quarter. The rest we would prioritize for the future.
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Top 3 Opportunities (to work on now):
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Keep members logged in as long as possible
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This is a frequent complaint heard in Customer Care and through the CSAT surveys. Members are logged out every day, which is less than ideal.
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Find a way to gather information from members ahead of time to personalize trip planning
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Services like trip planning are the selling point of Inspirato, the Inspirato difference. Members aren't seeing the value in trip planning because it doesn't feel personalized or any different than doing a Google search. We can use technology to help gather information for the Trip Planning Team, to assist in making more personalized itineraries. This will also save time and money spent on the lengthy calls Trip Planners have to make when a member does want trip planning services.
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Gather and surface more reviews and recommendations
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We know that reviews and recommendations are a top criteria for choosing where to go on vacation, where to stay, and what to do there. Our members often turn to the Facebook group to ask other members for reviews and recommendations. We have some reviews that we surface, but not enough to make it a meaningful experience. We could first work on gathering more reviews in the app by making the "leave a review" experience quick and painless, and offer a way to leave activity recommendations. Then we could start surfacing the reviews in a more meaningful way.
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Opportunities to Prioritize Next
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Make accommodation information more visible at the right time (i.e. home guides, surfacing address and security codes where it can be quickly accessed)
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When a guest arrives at their destination, it's difficult to find key information like the address of the property (which you have to know at customs when going to a different country), and also security codes and other important information about the home. Restructuring the layout to make these things easier to find would go a long way.
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Itinerary - make it more visible, and shareable potentially Travefy integrations
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Not everyone knows itinerary is accessible through the app, and it's difficult to share with other travelers in the group. We could boost awareness around all of the things that are helpful in the app through the welcome emails and calls. And making the itinerary planning and sharing easier to do with a group of travelers would be very helpful to our members, as they often are taking non-members with them as guests.
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Improve destination guides or the ability to self-serve to decide on destination activities
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Members like to be able to do some research around where they should go next. Even members who just call their Care team like to have a few places in mind first. But the destination guides we provide are generic and not dynamic, so it's difficult to change or add information as it is updated and there isn't anything special included that couldn't be found with a quick Google search. Our members crave tips/tricks and insider knowledge.
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Design Solution - Personalize Trip Planning
Design had proposed a prototype for gathering information from members to personalize their trips. We decided to repurpose these designs for the app, since this was one of the biggest areas of opportunity from the iOS research as well. These designs will go into testing soon. Everything else hasn't been designed yet.
Members often say trip planning doesn't feel personalized, it starts too late (30 days before the trip), and members just end up planning their own trips. Since Trip Planning is one of the main services that sets Inspirato apart from competitors, this could really make or break member retention.
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We created a way for members to start giving input on their trip preferences for the trip planning, right away. This streamlines the call that happens 30 days out and makes it easier for the Trip Planning team to gather curated experiences before the call.
Next Steps
These recommendations will go on the roadmap for iOS development, and designs will be tested and finalized.
Additional Research
One thing I wanted to add to this study was a feature analysis survey to the members. I wanted to have members rate each of our feature ideas for iOS as "must have", "nice to have", and "not important", and then calculate the feature importance score, to validate our assumptions with a larger percentage of our user base. But we were advised to hold off on the survey at this time because our members were already being bombarded with Marketing correspondence. There were also some concerns around potentially giving false promises to members, if we were unable to deliver what they wanted in the near future. So we decided we could work with what we had and then potentially do the survey in Q1 as part of the larger CSAT.