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Innovation Management Buddy.com Social Interaction Website for travelling

1/25/2016 Muhammad Ahsan Nawaz (18790) Husam Shakeeb (20305)

Mohammad Sazzad Hossan (19977)

Privalika janardhan (20686)

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Social Networking – It’s the way the 21st century communicates now. Social networking is the grouping

of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighboring subdivision. Although

social networking is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities & travel purposes, it is

most popular online. This is because unlike most colleges, workplaces or travel guides, the interest is

filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people. As consumers become

increasingly fragmented in how they engage with both traditional and social media, it is apparent

businesses must quickly adapt their presence online to establish and nurture new communities and

connect with them in authentic ways.

The main purpose to do this project is to facilitate a user to provide them know how about travelling.

This is a social interaction website for the sole purpose of travel and to help users find the surprises they

hope for when they travel.

Empathize Phase

In the empathy phase, we began with understanding how our social interaction website looks like with

the help of travel planning diary

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Following understanding phase where we conducted several qualitative interviews with some regular

user who travelled frequently. We were glad to interview an extreme user Richard who frequently

travels for historical places.

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

- Gustave Flaubert

We observed that Richard was excited while he was describing his travels to his favorite historical

places. However, we noticed a sudden drop in his excitement while quoting “It's really hard to manage

time, schedule, accommodation & the historical places in a short span this also affects my fun in new

place”.

Define Phase

As an outcome of observation during the empathy phase, we defined our point of view based on human

centered layout: quotes and defining words, thoughts and belief, feelings and emotions, actions and

behavior. And after such a valuable discussion we define some things about our website. In define phase

we actually know how what actually a person wants during travelling and before making a travelling

plan.

Ideate Phase

Using brainstorming, sketching and several other techniques, we came up with numerous ideas. The

most promising for us was the idea of travel buddy website. This service should help for the ones who

are going or making plan to go for different places during their leisure time. And also people can

endorse different other people activities.

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Here is some functionality of our website which will help user to choose the best place for visit.

User profile: screen name, personal/profile photo, info the person has chosen to share about

themselves etc.

Travel CV: list of visited locations with timing and purpose of each trip

Trips: A "timeline" showing the trips the user wants others to see, this will include media, location

information, reviews of destinations and services.

Travel buddy system: with privacy in mind, if a user wants to help other users and share an upcoming

travel experience the user can show this on his page and if there are users willing to have the same trip

they can arrange it together using the website. This allows the users to enjoy new experiences even in

destinations they visited before thanks to having an experienced traveller helping them to a certain

extent agreed upon before the trip.

Endorsement system: the travel related skills or activities the user can do or has done before and

endorsements by fellow travel buddies. for example hiking **** fishing *** safari *** etc. in addition

we can have testimonials or reviews of the website itself by users to show how they had new

experiences from connecting with people who have good info and tips on the same site.

Reward system: this website is meant to be used by an airline. The airline can choose how to reward

active travel buddies and also use the website for exclusive offers. Users can also send rewards to each

other in the form of endorsements or expenses or mileage depending on what the users prefer and

what the airline would like to introduce as a "currency" for the website (Similar to micro transactions or

in app purchases).

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Game function: Travel based games in the form of simple rpg which can be entirely virtual or can also

take place during an actual trip and connected to the rewards program.

Prototype Phase

With our ideas, we developed a video & website to describe the user and conceptual sketching to

demonstrate our application. During prototype phase our team won a reward to making tallest tree.

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After a lot of effort we came up with our result which is related to video & website. Here is a detailed

overview about our video.

Video:

In the beginning the airline can kick-off the program by sending invitations to frequent travelers to

certain destinations that can be considered adventurous or exclusive. The user receives an invitation

that explains how they can travel more than before if they help other travelers or if they would like to

meet travelers that have been to different destinations. This can be convincing if for example two users

have been to a destination but they had different experiences and now because of this program they

can enjoy a different experience and be rewarded for it.

The video should show that the user receives an exclusive invitation with rewards that no other Airline is

providing with ideas and prices that have not been seen before. As a result travelers will have new

experiences even in destinations that they visited before and more people travel to enjoy the rewards.

After the invitation the new user can visit the website and start seeing others who have also been

invited and their endorsements and the things this user has always wanted to do. When a trip has been

completed successfully or after a certain number of legitimate endorsements the user can start inviting

others to the program and the network can grow.

The airline can also choose whom to invite and possibly choose meaningful occasions like birthdays or

holidays to surprise frequent travelers on its own planes or from other airlines if the info is available.

The video should also show how people have great experiences and photos or videos being shared on

their page to gain rewards from the website and also how the network of travel buddies expands as a

result.

Research on existing Solutions

Some Current Solutions

Below the list of competitive solutions is provided:

https://www.linkedin.com

http://www.travelguru.com

https://www.misstravel.com

Due to the limited size of the paper we decided to omit detailed description of each competitor, but

only highlight the benefits of our solution in comparison with the others.

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Travel Buddy

All of the travel solution provides similar travel buddy options that usually include cheap ticketing, hotel

booking, rental car reservation, event tickets, etc., however, our solution will go further. Here are some

values related to travel guru.

First of all: A travel guru receives invitation. He proceeds to view what this invitation is and then the

video begins to show website features that the user finds amazing. He can also see suggestions of other

users that have agreed to become part of the program.

Secondly: After a quick demo of the features he can now see his first reward for joining the program

like; this can be discount on his next trip, frequent flyer miles, discount on flights, good deals on hotels,

etc. He is happy about it and starts to plan a new trip. The website makes it very easy to choose a

destination and accommodation because some other users already uploaded some useful info about

these and there's not much planning to be done. The user then travels and helps other travelers that

have joined the program to find the surprises they were hoping to find.

Thirdly: He posts images and videos about his own experience and the travelers he helped will give him

endorsements for the skills he showed them like; best places for fun activities, shopping, dining, etc.

When he returns he has new friends and he can help them with travel buddy info from home and gain

more endorsements for giving helpful information. His reward system shows that he can be eligible for

more rewards or deals. He adds more people and interest rises in this new way of planning and enjoying

trips which doesn't include a lot of Google search and reading reviews from hundreds of people not

knowing if they are legitimate or not.

Lastly: His network of travelers is growing and friends are inviting other friends and showing them how

travel can be much easier than they thought it was because now they have info from real experts with

endorsements and legitimate reviews.