Case Study: Jazan Application for tourism, the pearl of the south.

Introduction

This case study was about creating a Jazan tourism application for our users in Saudi Arabia. In the beginning, we had lack of resources about Jazan from pictures to actual info about previous experience for users in Jazan, or a general knowledge about the city. However, we were able to find more info when we done the interview and surveys with our users. The amount of info and knowledge we gained from this project about Jazan was astonishing, which indecated that we need to increase awareness about marvelous city's like Jazan in Saudi Arabia.

Project Duration:

2 weeks

Tools used in this project:

• Miro
• Figma
• Canva
• Google doc
• Maze

We followed the double diamond design approach, which included four phases.

• Discover the problem
• Define the area that need focus
• Develop solution
• Deliver solution

The Client

Jazan is known in Saudi Arabia as the pearl of the south, Jazan is a port city and the capital of the Jizan Region, which lies in the southwest corner of Saudi Arabia and directly north of the border with Yemen.

Discover

Disk research:

• Users’ reviews showed their frustration about high travel prices in Saudi Arabia and travel outside Saudi Arabia was cheaper.
• We noticed that citizens can’t help tourism in Saudi Arabia unless prices go down.
• Users are attracted to cities in the north, south, and cities with moderate weather .
• The (19-COVID) contributed to tourism in Saudi Arabia and Saudi citizens have curiosity to discover Saudi areas like Jazan , etc.

User research

Goal of user research:

• Pain points of traveling in Jazan
• How interested they are in the cultural aspects of Jazan.
• Understand users’ past experience in Jazan ,and their behaviors in traveling.

After we knew the goal of user research, we used interviews and surveys to help us through the discovery phase.

Survey Findings

We conducted 34 surveys

• Trying different activities: Most of the users chose water activities and trying local food as the major wanted activities.
• The hot weather: more than half of the users who didn’t go to Jazan are due to the hot weather.
• Facilities: the lack of proper accommodation and transportation is a big part of not going to Jazan for users.

Interviews Findings

We interviewed 22 users

• The Kindness and generosity of people: Users who visited Jazan before talked about the people of Jazan kindness and generosity which display the importance of interacting with locals.
• The Lack of knowledge: Many users don’t know anything about Jazan city except its location.
• Traveling as a group: Jazan is most preferable to visit in friends groups or with family.

Affinity Mapping & Analysis

Business Analysis included:

• C&C analysis
• Heuristic evaluation
• layout analysis
• Positioning Marketing
• Leaf diagram
• Business needs & user needs

C&C Analysis

C&C insights:

-Distracting layout: noticed that traveling websites frequently put big images and use many colors which can be distracting for the eyes.

• Homepage content: too much information is provided on most of the website’s home page which can be overwhelming.
• Reviews: reviews are a major feature in almost all competitors’ websites, tourists like to write about their experiences and opinions.
• Neglection of Jazan: most of the local competitors Apps & websites neglected Jazan as a tourism spot.
• attracting stories: Pangea website offers a great attracting stories behind almost every city which could be inspiring.
• Arabic Language: Few of the global websites include the Arabic language.
• Live chat: None of the websites contain live chat box, most of them offer customer service through email which is impractical.

Heuristic evaluation Analysis

Heuristic evaluation insights:

For the heuristic evaluation, most websites had a lot of the information in the navigation bar. Some other websites interested in group activities offer various options. However, other websites have different categories. the errors most of the websites handled them correctly. For every website, UI reflects the city and the mood of the city.

Layout analysis

Layout analysis insights

• Home page for websites was typically the same content internationally and locally was two that followed somehow airbnb content, which was almusafar app and gather In app.
• Colors Of the websites was comfortable to the eyes and matched websites features.
• Airbnb was the top from all competitors, in which they have high quality pictures and pictures simulated the tourist experience.
• TripAdvisor booking for hotels or any service in the app not done inside TripAdvisor app but from their business.

Positioning Marketing

Leaf Diagram

Business needs & user needs

Define

Problem statement

Here, the problem statement was from two sides: tourists and resident of Jazan.

Residents of Jazan and Saudi tourists think of Jazan as an amazing place to visit, however they face different challenges.

Jazan’s residents feel that Jazan has an ignored spot of tourism. They want to share the unique cultural aspects and places of Jazan with the rest of the world. On the other hand, Jazan’s tourist are interested in Jazan and its culture and nature but they they don’t know how to connect with Jazan’s resident to get to know Jazan more.

Our personas

User journey

Storyboard

Key features

After the intense research process, we came up with these feature for our app Jazan, which was the soultion for both of our personas Ali and Mohammed.

Develop

User flow

Task flow

Card sorting

We conducted 5 card sorting from our users. We discoverd that two users mixed activity with famous places. As a result of the mixing, we changed pictures of famous places, hospitality, and home page to ease for the user to use our app(Jazan). Also, we add onboarding feature for users to remove any unclearness of how to use the app.

Site Map

Wireframe

Sketching by using Miro tool

Annotated wireframes

Delivery

Here, we changed the onboarding screens three times, due to pictures that didn’t match with the concept of the application, which was according to our users. Also, we changed the payment screen because our users didn’t like the add button and wanted a pop up screen with credit card info.

Final prototype

Future plans

• We will add virtual tourism consulting.
• We will do more testing to enhance the application.
• We will add live video option for users to share their trip experience.
• We will add videos for fames places in the home page .
• We will add introductory video in hostess profile .
• We will add blog page for users to post their thoughts.
• We will add story option for users to upload their stories.

Conclusion

It was a great project even though it was a little hard, but we managed to conclude this project with this amazing result. Two project left and soon going to reach the end of UX/UI immersive course by Misk Academy. Can’t wait to see what surprises will the next project hold for us.