Solving for Tourism During a Pandemic: A Case Study
Strategic Innovation in Product and Service Design partners interaction design graduate students with a real-world dilemma, supporting an end-to-end product that solves the partner’s unique problem. My team was introduced to Mahone Bay, a small (very small) coastal community in Nova Scotia, whose local economy relies heavily on tourism.
Before we begin, I want to preface this project with a stark fact: this project took place in the pandemic throes of fall of 2020. I am incredibly proud of the timezone-divided discussions, virtual interviews, and remote co-designing of this product. I was very lucky to have such a focused, fun, and deeply empathetic team to work with during such a bizarre and scary time in our education — and history.
That said, here’s a quick overview of my role, methods used, and the patient and clever team of colleagues and advisors:
Roles & Methods
Strategy / research / user interviews / analysis & synthesis / personas / journey mapping / creative direction
Team
Tianyi Fu
Brenda Hawley
Priyal Mehta
Advisors
Danielle King
Criswell Lappin
Roger Mader
Duration
10 weeks
HMW: How Might We
How might we help travelers discover and prioritize Mahone Bay as a destination — and not as a drive-through town?
Define
In “normal” times, this would have been a marketing issue, but the fact remained: no amount of advertising could make up for a pandemic demolishing the global tourism industry. Resort towns rely on seasonal big-spending vacationers, but what happens when those big-spenders aren’t even allowed into the Province?
Working with the Mahone Bay advisor Danielle King, a detailed problem statement was developed to meet the wide variety of issues King expressed the town was facing. This ultimately guided the research, design and development:
After diving into the project a bit more, we came back to the problem and distilled it down further. Yes, Mahone Bay needed a solve for tourism — but so did Nova Scotia as a whole. Travel Restrictions lead to a dip in tourism across the province, but in reality, it wasn’t only the pandemic-induced border closures. These old-world towns hadn’t caught up with modern travelers’ needs. (Everyone is connected to the internet, but it was difficult to discover places.) So, we shifted the statement towards working with travel restrictions and adding a technology factor with the broader goal of gaining new repeat travelers.
Solution
A travel app for locals which utilizes a radial distance to help Atlanticanadians discover hidden-gem destinations within their own beautiful province.
To get from the HMW to our solution, we followed the classic design thinking double diamond method. For the sake of this case study, I presented Define out of order to give more context upfront — the TLDR version, if I may, and use the term “Deploy” instead of Deliver.
Discover
Market Research
Through our initial research, we learned a lot about how the industry was handling the paradigm shift. Museums started offering a breadth of online exhibits, tourism-reliant regions turned their focus towards their residents, and while flight sales were down, the old-fashioned road trip had everyone singing ‘King of the Road’ on formerly empty highways.
Key Findings:
- Google Maps is simple in theory but requires a lot of work.
- All Trails, a hiking site, is well-organized but hyper-focused.
- Lonely Planet, a popular travel site, only offered insights for larger towns and also recently shut down their community forums.
Seeing the comparative market mapped out, we realized there was a big opportunity to build something with a local focus, that is interactive and develops community.
Interviews
We interviewed 8 people including local travelers, not-so-local travelers, Mahone Bay residents and business owners, and 1 former Canadian. (From the former-Canadian we gained insight about Canadian domestic travel compared to domestic travel within the United States.) After doing affinity mapping to organize our interview insights, we found that there were four main areas that came into focus: residents, activities, technology, tourism.
The final guiding principle we gained from the interviews was from a business owner that put the Mahone Bay perspective into the forefront. We were told,
“We want to see [Nova Scotia] prosper, but we don’t want to see it change.”
This insight meant we needed to be clever. The project goal wasn’t to come up with the latest attraction to gain tourists, it was about bringing to light the things that already made Mahone Bay special.
Personas
Once the interviews were wrapped up, we synthesized the information and started to develop personas. Our first set of personas were very specific to the the “person.” While we understood that this was how personas are meant to be, it just felt too tight, like we were leaving out key players.
After going back to our interviews we came back with a different persona approach. It wasn’t about “Kate” or “Quinn,” it was about who they were in a broader sense. (For context, not all outdoor people are 30-something hikers, but regardless of demographic, the Outdoor Connoisseur is more locally supportive and nature-focused.) We revised our personas to cover the three main types of travelers we wanted to entice into Mahone Bay.
User Journey
There were two things every interviewee said: Mahone Bay is gorgeous and technology is a big part of how people travel so we started to map out a journey that supported both a web and mobile experience.
Design
Final Factors
Considering the stakeholders needs, we concluded that there were four main factors to address.
Radius Driven
Canada did a great job at curbing the spread of COVID and that was mainly due to Canadians being very strict about closing borders to both the country and its provinces. That mindset honed our focus onto locals instead of worldly tourists.
Locally Inspired
This doesn’t mean catering to the local travelers but rather supporting local businesses. The goals of ROVE were meant to be curated to the town’s offerings so travelers had uniquely Canadian experiences.
Community-building
Our goal was to build a sense of camaraderie among townspeople and travelers, making weekend jaunts less about seeing something new, and more about visiting Paul’s restaurant or Sue’s shop. We also wanted to develop community among travelers themselves so great finds could be shared and supported.
Interactive
We really wanted to create something fun. We didn’t want to just tell people what was there, we wanted to help them develop an adventure.
Final Outcome
Ultimately, we developed a comprehensive three-part travel app.
- Radius
An updated map and searching experience showing travelers different locales and events within a selected radius. - Game
A choose-your-own-adventure type game to discover new places and activities. - Community
A community section where users could share itineraries and earn badges for repeat visits.
Radius
By selecting a radius (i.e. deciding how far away they’re willing to travel) Rove shows the adventurer lesser-known locales, events and hidden gems within their range. It’s the app version of having a friend say, “I found this tiny place that had the best burgers. You have to detour for this place!”
Game
The choose-your-own-adventure inspired game plays as simultaneously guided and spontaneous. It gives users a chance to be open to possibilities, which is something we heard our interviewers say: that they enjoy the whimsy of travel. The game is not meant to be an itinerary builder so much as a scavenger hunt.
Users select a radius, as in the map section of the app, and are then prompted by adventure types. We have broad categories for the active or social traveler, as well as something for the history-buffs (Nova Scotia is home to UNESCO site, Lunenburg) and people who simply like to rove. After that the user dives deeper into the kind of adventure they’re looking for and end up developing a Hunt List. The idea is not to overload people with things to do but to put them in places they may not otherwise come across on the their own.
With the “support local” mindset, Rovers can earn badges and status by checking off their hunt list locations. The idea is that by introducing people to areas outside their hometown, they can add these newfound hidden gems to their weekend repertoire, ultimately supporting greater Nova Scotia.
Community
The last piece of the Rove puzzle is the community element. We saw this space as being more than just connecting with current friends about new spots. If a user chooses, they’re able to share their location with other Rovers who are in the same location. The idea is that people can connect with likeminded travelers, inciting the same serendipitous meetings that often take place when traveling abroad. This is a space where users can share their Hunts, promote favorite spots and connect with fellow local travelers — making new local friends in the process.
Deploy
The exciting thing about Rove is that there are a lot of growth prospects. For those less interested in another app or web-based product, travelers can have the same interactive planning experience via kiosks in travel and information centers. Our team would love to see an even more interactive element to the scavenger hunt by making the game more dynamic with augmented reality incorporated into searches. While Rove was developed with Mahone Bay’s unique offerings in mind, it would be a great tool for travelers exploring areas with condensed small towns.
Business Model
We saw two opportunities to bring Rove to life, one B2B and the other a B2C model.
With Rove being a tool to enhance local tourism, we saw an opportunity with TIANS, the Travel Industry Association of Nova Scotia. They require membership fees for their Doers and Dreamers sector, an annual guide that promotes Nova Scotian businesses, and after consulting with our Mahone Bay advisor Danielle King, we saw that we could act as Nova Scotia’s own travel app — a space that they explored but did not maintain.
Alternatively, Rove could be subscription based with a kickback model to entice local companies to participate.
We looked at travel statistics and saw dramatic drops, of course, between 2019 and 2020. However, we realized that taking into consideration the 2020 numbers gave us a more accurate reading of what our local Nova Scotian market looked like. If we focused on growing the user base within only the Atlantic Provinces, a modest annual subscription could produce upwards of $800k in revenue. Open that base up to Nova Scotian travelers at large and we start growing.
Reflection
While this was my first major project experience in graduate school, it was not my first time working with a team. I was happy to work with some hugely talented peers and also be able to dive into my strengths of creative direction, information analysis and storytelling.
Truthfully, when we began, we were all concerned that this was a marketing problem, but that was my first lesson in interaction design, never assume anything. After a lot of research and many meetings with our project advisors, as a team we were able to think outside the box and develop a product, not only for our sponsor, but that also recognized a gap in the greater travel industry.
If I were to do this project again, I would want to do more project management in the forefront. I believe we were lucky that our skills divided our roles naturally, but we could have been more efficient if we had divided and conquered instead of working together on all elements.
***
Quick reminder that we were a team of MFA candidates, not MBA! While the numbers above are what we delivered, I’ve reflected since and have done some extra calculations:
If a much more conservative 1% of the Nova Scotia traveling population purchased a $29.99 annual subscription, a “post-pandemic travel year” would come in around $689,770 in annual revenue.
While that’s not quite the original projection of nearly $2.3m, there is still a lot of additional opportunity in Rove. The app has the potential to gain valuable data for TIANS, while also opening up additional revenue opportunities via marketing collaborations with local businesses. There is also the possibility to expand the app into tiers, allowing a free, mid and high membership value to travelers based on Radius, Game and Community products.
