Sherpa – Improving the Mobile Experience for Tour Booking

Target and Challenge

This was a passion project. I saw an opportunity in the market for innovation in the small-to-mid size tour operator app space. I researched and designed this product to facilitate operations and serve their customer base. I researched the industry, the competitive landscape.

The industry leading apps lacked intuitive user experience, key features to facilitate the scheduling process, efficient transactions, and overall ease of use. The goal was to give small and medium size tour operators an easy to use, full featured, modern, tool to manage schedules, process payment transactions, and customize reporting that was equally functional on mobile and desktop devices.

Competitive Analysis and User Research

I conducted guided product demonstrations of the competing apps in the space. I compiled detailed notes of the the key benefits and shortcomings of each product. I also conducted a series of structured interviews with small tour operators in multiple sates, covering a wide variety of tour types – surfing, kayaking, hiking, fishing, and skiing – to determine their priorities and pain points.

I conducted qualitative user interviews to determine needs and expectations and used it to develop user personas and journey maps.

Product Requirements

Next, I created a comprehensive product requirements doc and a prioritized phased approach to feature rollout based on a minimum viable product methodology. General requirement categories include: