Travel Pals
An online travel community to connect, receive travel recommendations, and share your own adventures!
Role
User Researcher
User Designer
Team
Melissa Vozar
Ivey Ewang
Sarah Kurata
Bennett Proegler
Timeline
January - April 2023
Tools
Figma
Travel Pals provides a community for travelers of all experience levels. In this community, experienced travelers are encouraged to post about their excursions, so that novice travelers can accrue inspiration and advice for their next trips. Additionally, our community recommends travel buddies to users based on similar profiles, or by request of the user.
Overview
In the University of Michigan’s Online Communities course, I actively studied the theory and background of online interaction environments. After an entire semester of studying online communities such as Reddit, Facebook Groups, etc., my team and I were tasked with creating and designing our own online community platform. Travel Pals provides a social space and opportunity to contribute to a wide range of users’ travel needs.
Background
Users who are well-traveled and tend to contribute to the platform consistently will earn an “Experienced Traveler” tag on their account. This tag will appear on all of their posts and in their profile. Upon creating an account, users will have an opportunity to add a “Novice Traveler” tag to their profile, indicating that they are new to the hobby and are open to advice or mentor relationships with more experienced travelers. The default for profiles who do not select a “Novice Traveler” tag will have no tag, so that they are not targeted with advice from more experienced travelers. They will earn the “Experienced Traveler” tag as they create more posts that are deemed helpful to others.
User Roles
The main type of participation that we aim to see from our users is user-to-user interaction by asking and responding to questions via our chat feature, sharing photos from travel experiences, and posting recommendations on food, housing, transportation, etc.
User Participation
User Personas
Design Files
Mockups
Home Page
Profile Page
Explore Section
Chat Section
High-Fidelity Prototype
Ethical Reflections
Content Moderation and Community Management
Running a social platform presents the challenge of determining what content should be moderated or censored.
We recognize the potential for misunderstandings or conflicts arising from cultural differences, given the platform’s global focus.
The platform will include standard moderation tools to filter known racial slurs and other harmful language, and these systems will be regularly updated.
The platform is designed as an information-sharing community that will rely largely on user self-policing, similar to the model described by Wikipedia and discussed by Amy Bruckman (2022, Chapter 6).
Users will receive a score based on the usefulness and quality of their contributions, as well as actions they take to support community safety.
Users who earn higher rankings and receive the “Experienced Traveler” designation will be invited to serve as moderators within their local communities.
We anticipate that a strong sense of camaraderie will help the community operate smoothly and responsibly.
User Safety and Offline Protection
Because connections made on the platform may extend into real-world interactions, offline user safety is a key consideration.
Users will be required to submit government-issued photo identification for verification.
A dedicated team will review reports of malicious behavior and take appropriate action when necessary.
When meeting a new travel companion, users will have access to live location-sharing tools that allow a trusted contact to monitor their whereabouts.
While it is not possible to eliminate all risks, the platform will consistently encourage users to exercise caution when meeting individuals outside the app.
Case Study Slides
Check out more of my work!
