KAYAK Explore
KAYAK is known for finding the best flight prices, but most users come to the site to price check rather than discovery or inspiration.
Desired User Outcome: Attract travelers to KAYAK during the discovery phase of their travel journey to explore destinations and better understand prices and options.
Business Goal: Position KAYAK as a place to discover new places and build an entire trip at once - resulting in more booking types per customer.
Discovery
To better understand what types of content travelers wanted and how to provide a more engaging experience, we first needed to explore the current space and talk to travelers about their needs.
The methods we used helped clarify universal patterns and also hone in on regionally specific trends. Many of the steps involved in travel planning and creation are similar, but the trips chosen and prioritization of desires is much different. For example, travelers from Brazil are more inclined to go to beaches for vacation. They value rooms with ocean views and air-conditioning and prioritize socializing their trip. Travelers coming from South Korea seek city exploration and prioritize extravagant food over better hotel views.
Differences in desires is a pivotal way that we can help personalize the generalized content delivered to different segments before we are able to learn more about the individual travelers through their searches and interest areas. Since the new experience is focused on content, this step is key to making it an experience that will resonate well with first time users.
Methods used
Competitor Gap Analysis
User Journey Mapping
User Interviews
3 Global Surveys
Consolidated User Journey Mapping
We weren’t starting from scratch with the Explore Feature. It’s current manifestation is a dedicated map page where travelers can see everywhere they can go and for how much. It’s a fun tool that helps many wanderers get a sense of how far their budget will take them distance wise. What it lacks is an understanding of what the destination is like, and more importantly, what the overall cost of the trip with hotel, meals and entertainment would be.
A large chunk of discovery time was spent understanding what content we could deliver and how that should be mapped to provide the most intuitive flow and navigation. Content is expensive to purchase and we were also looking at increased costs if using Google Maps to provide map updates, initial imagery and landmark information.
From a user experience perspective, this was going to be a whole new experience. We did a lot of user testing on the different hierarchy options, swipes and gestures. KAYAK users range from 18 year olds planning their spring break to 80 year olds looking to see their grandchildren. They plan one trip a year on average. From a usability perspective this means that we needed to lean towards intuitive over delightful or unique gestures - easy frustration within an app that isn’t used daily will quickly divert a user to using Google for their discovery.
Making sure the map experience was also legible and easy to use on mobile, in addition to the new content, was also a priority. The phone is a small space to be exploring the world in this way. The final designs split the content on the Home Screen in a way that let the user choose their own adventure. Maybe today the user wants to jump in to see where they could go in the the world, but tomorrow they will want to see what people were posting about the cities they had just traveled to.
The final design vision beautifully invoked the new KAYAK look/feel at the time:
• Bold use of the KAYAK orange used to guide and navigate customers through the experience
• Hard lines and corners matching the “Digital building blocks” of a physical experience invoked by the square shapes within the KAYAK logo.
• An emphasis on elegant overviews that can be further explored for more detail, as highlighted by the image clusters that give just the right amount of destination information to entice interested travelers into a deeper dive.
• Simple gestures that invoked grand transitions and immersive exploration.
Explore View
Destination View