Team: Binru Liu & Yitong Han
According to the user-centred design thinking, I decided to invite my grandmother to travel with me. Only secondary research is not enough in design working. Designers also need to find design opportunities through primary research. In this intergenerational travel, I was able to experience the trip from the user’s perspective and identify other factors that might influence the travel experience.
Case Study — Intergenerational Travel with Grandmother
In August, I invited my grandmother to travel with me. It was a standard intergenerational travel.
Travellers: 1 young man aged 24 and 1 old woman aged 72
Duration: 2 days and 1 night. The elderly man is not physically able to take a long trip
Location: City + Natural places around the city
Transportation: Car and Train
As Wang et al (2012)states, travel usually can be divided into three stages: the anticipatory stage, the experiential stage and the reflective stage. This intergenerational travel was no different.
In the anticipatory stage, our activities included searching for information, making travel plans and booking hotels. While making travel plans I found that my grandmother was not very active in expressing her ideas and indicated her willingness to follow my arrangements.
During the experience phase, we travelled to the tourist sites as planned. My grandmother suddenly suggested that she wanted to see the place where she was working in the past, so we changed our schedule. Due to the rapid changes in the city, we spent a lot of time not finding the place and finally gave up finding it.
The reflective phase usually happens after the end of the travel. On the way back, my grandmother thought that the trip had cost too much and the hotel bed was not very comfortable. She felt that she had not rested well during the trip.
Summary
User needs
Young User (me):
1. He prefer to stay in a place with convenient transportation, good living facilities and close to popular tourist attractions
2. He doesn’t care about the price, more concerned about the travel experience
3. He wants to enjoy special local food and is willing to explore various less popular attractions.
Elderly User (Grandmother):
1. She want a more relaxed trip, not too tiring.
2. She don’t want to spend too much money. And she has no high requirements for accommodation and food.
3. She wants to visit places with special memories, such as a previous workplace.
4. She would like to have a good rest during the travel.
User pain points:
1. The elderly are not willing to express their full wishes when they are in face-to-face meetings.
2. Traveller are difficult to find some old locations.
3. Unexpected situations affect the travel schedule. When the schedule changes, travellers need to spend a lot of time rearranging their plans.
4. Unexpected situations can also affect the traveller’s experience. Travellers want to have a solution to deal with these problems.
Reflection
Case study allows for a comprehensive and in-depth investigation of user behaviour in a given environment, because users may behave differently in different environments. In the case of travel, some user behaviours will only appear during travel. If designers do not conduct a case study, they may miss the opportunity to observe these user behaviours.
During this travel, I also noticed some limitations of the case study methodology.Firstly, the results in the case study lacked representativeness. Secondly, the results of the case study were derived from the designer’s analysis. Therefore, the results are highly subjective in nature. Last, case study takes a lot of time. Case study may not be well suited to short-term projects.
We will continue the “Discovery” phase. We plan to use questionnaires and interviews to get more useful information.
Reference
Wang, D., Park, S. and Fesenmaier, D.R. (2012) ‘The Role of Smartphones in Mediating the Touristic Experience’, Journal of Travel Research, 51(4), pp. 371–387. doi:10.1177/0047287511426341.
