Stay-in

Introduction

Stay-in is an app that provides users with exclusive getaway spots for holidays or a user just looking for a nice place to stay in when on a business trip, it also offers discounted rate on hotels and flights providing a whole user experience from start to finish of their journey, Stay-in saw the market as a for exclusive getaways as a niche and wanted something that can help users achieve a wonderful experience without breaking the bank.

Problems

Traveling enthusiast or new travellers who enjoy scenery and getaway destinations often find it difficult to find that perfect spot that they will always remember and want to keep visiting, they often get stuck with last minute bookings that isn’t really what they want often times when you find the perfect place it extremely expensive and most are unable to afford it.

Solutions

Stay-in mobile app, has visualize this and come up with a app to provide users with these services at affordable rate reaching out to hotels and home owners with semi luxury and willing to bargain at affordable rate, providing users an experience that they will not only remember but will not break the bank.

My Role

UX Researcher

UX Design

UI Design

Tools

Figma

Illustrator

Corel Draw

Timeline

8 weeks

Design and Research: 2 week

Design and iterations: 6 weeks

Process

Research and interviews

Conceptualization

Wireframe and LowFi Screens

User Flows

HiFi Screens

Prototyping

Handoff

Research

For an in depth understanding into this section of the hospitality industry we conducted research based on how patrons react to holidays and vacations in general and how they view going on a luxury or semi luxury vacation.

There were some factors to consider, such as income of the patrons, age group, married or single, kids or without kids.

There was always one common denominator with the patrons and most of the time it came down to finances, in order to afford the holiday patrons really want they most often than not have to spend more than their actual holiday budget for those who have one and others just cannot afford to go on holiday. For those that can actually afford some form of holiday, they sometimes get disappointed as the pictures are deceiving which leaves them sceptical when planning future holidays.

Miriam

“I look forward to having my holiday by myself, but since I have kids, its abit difficult affording holiday for the whole family.”

Kubeka

“Holidays have always been fun for my family, and going away is always the best part, we always look for what we can afford because what we could do with R10, 000 2 years ago cannot be done now, this usually limit our choices.”

Khanyi

“Holidays are fun and was a big part of my life, but things are getting expensive and we can no longer afford destinations, we just stay home and do family fun activities instead, saving us money”

Conceptualization

During this process all the result from the research and user interviews were taking into consideration, formatting a flow where users can easily access these services, finding affordable holiday destinations.

The client made it clear all users authenticated or not should be able to access the service and should only be authenticated when they decide pay for one of the service, this was really a good idea, as this give users the choice to browse through without commitment of registration or signing in (no obligation). Users can window shop until they are ready to purchase.

Design

This phase was quit exiting for me as a designer because this is where most of the main design ideas start to take shape, we did a few options to present to the client giving, few iterations where done on the Low fidelity design before we moved into high fidelity, but ultimately we found a system that works and started building from there.