The ideation process began with our team generating more than 100 ideas centered around our product requirements, including but not limited to features, potential technologies, mediums and services. While there could be ideas that overlapped, as mentioned before the focus was on generating more ideas to have the luxury of choosing, combining in the future.

Then these ideas were grouped into categories based on their similarity with each other.

The ideas under each category were synthesized, pulling valuable elements out of them and reconvene those elements to build prototypes being able to validate the potential of the ideas. Rapid prototypes were built using storyboards and wireframes by constantly reflecting on the values of the original ideas. The idea of rapid prototype centers around getting as much feedback as possible from the least amount of effort. In this manner, we successively built 17 quick concepts.

Based on feedback on the concepts within the team we iterated and synthesized the first-round prototypes into six main concepts. Building these concepts allowed us to begin to evaluate them critically and understand the pros and cons of each idea.

Then we evaluated the concepts based on the criteria of compatibility with opportunity & product requirement, innovation, practicality, feasibility, etc. to analyze the advantage and disadvantages of six concepts. These criteria were internally decided and weighted based on their importance to help gauge the value of each idea.

Next, we sought feedback from travelers who matched our targeted customer segment of busy travelers. The feedbacks mainly focused on understanding whether the travelers found value to fulfill their needs.

• Users like the “Personal Travel Curator” and “Idea Book plug-in” as they prefer human service to computers or robots.
• Users are fond of the idea of being able to talk to the same travel expert to resolve their concerns, the idea book was perceived as something that can help them to organize and save their instant thoughts and provide them whenever they need inspirations for next travels.
• For the “Membership Card” business model, users were excited about having “one-click” cancellation service as they usually have concerns during the booking phase of unpredicted emergencies.
• Users have huge concerns on having another social media platform as they did not see a huge difference from other social media platforms on “community” concept.

Based on user feedback and internal reviews on the six concepts, we decided to move forward with the “Personal Travel Curation” idea with “Idea book” plug-in as the supportive feature and “Membership Card” service as guidance of business model. Our solution is a digital service which suggests customizable vacation packages (destinations, lodging and boarding, air and ground transportation, itineraries) to travelers based on their preferences crafted by experienced and knowledgeable travel curators.

The questionnaire is the first step to understand travelers such as favorite destinations, travel types, etc. It is one of the easiest, cost effective means to learn about the users. The questionnaire was developed by studying multiple travel questionnaires in the market and curated to match our solution. The final version was developed after conducting multiple rounds of user feedbacks.

The Idea Book is a highlight feature of our concept which allows the users to easily save their inspirations/ideas through the images they encountered on the internet by utilizing their fragmented time. If they already have pictures in their devices or find something interesting in paper materials, they are also able to manually add contents to the “Idea Book“.

Once the travelers have decided to have vacations, but have no specific idea, they can simply fill out travel details, and then request recommended packages that would be designed by personal curator. They will be highly customized based on the already built profiles.

Next, the travelers would receive the notification along with tailored packages with compatibility ratings and the supportive reasonings behind the scores for various destinations and are able to easily make the final decision.

Once a package is booked, the travelers can select the local attractions, restaurants, and events they are interested in according to their preference built based on questionnaire and “Idea book“. The Curator will take this information and provide a suggested itinerary, considering time spent at each location and proximity to one another.

Push notification is an easy and effective way to communicate with travelers. The notification can be used to encourage exploration and to engage with travelers anytime. This can be especially effective during low seasons. By using appropriate language like “Now is a great time to travel”, you can encourage travelers to enter the app and begin further engagement.

Travelers are able to seek the assistance of exclusive personal curator, the one who designed a high level list of travel options for the destinations through chat, voice or video call for any concerns on the planning and booking process.