Whispering secrets to tourists in Normandy: the UX/UI of a web app

Client
CRT Normandie
Year
2017

The challenge

The Normandy Regional Tourism Committee wants to create a scalable digital system that lets geolocated tourists tap into the offers that are open and available, today and tomorrow, in Normandy, by giving them personalised recommendations based on their profile.

Whispering secrets to tourists in Normandy: the UX/UI of a web app

Project flow

01. Framing
02. User interviews
03. Personas and experience map
04. Sitemap
05. Web app wireframes
06. Art direction
07. UI design and delivery

Study detail

Understanding tourists

Normandy offers a wide range of tourism experiences, aimed at different profiles. First step: understanding the variety of their needs.

Phone interviews and questionnaire
Picture of an interview grid filled out in the street

We head to iconic sites of the Normandy region (Caen, Rouen, Cabourg, etc.) to talk with tourists whose profiles are shaped by those places. We cover hundreds of kilometres to meet them in every corner of Normandy, where their travel experience takes place.

Phone interviews with tourist-office staff round out the view of visitor profiles’ needs and expectations.

Using these findings, an ideation workshop is held to build personas and a tourist experience map for before, during and after the stay.

Presentation of the 'Normandy tourist' personas
102
tourists met and interviewed throughout the project
Experience map co-design workshop
CRT Normandie experience map

Information architecture and mockups

Using the personas and experience map as inputs, a co-design workshop is organised to build a user-centred tool.

65
mobile and desktop wireframes for the website

We dedicate this time to thinking about the main and secondary features, the information architecture, and finishing with a co-sketching exercise on the home page. This work kicks off the UX sprint phase, including design, prototyping and guerrilla tests, interspersed with client iterations.

Workshop materials: sticky notes, pen, dot stickers
Co-sketching workshop participants
Wireframes desktop version
Mobile version wireframes

Visual design for Secrets Normands

With the information architecture consolidated in the wireframes, the art direction and UI design work can start.

Following the wireframe design, our UX designers draft a specifications book to make the ergonomics and the flow between pages easier to understand, along with the interactions and other invisible details and key points to remember. These elements are picked up by our teams to work on the art direction and the graphic version of the service. In partnership with Julie Benhaïm (opens in new window), we carry the graphic vision so that form embraces substance.

Presentation of the final white-label interfaces

We are very pleased with the work delivered by Akiani. Throughout the engagement entrusted to them, our contacts showed professional rigour, an excellent attentive listening, and great flexibility. All these qualities allowed for a coherent response to all of our needs, and sticking to the schedule despite very tight deadlines. The working methods put in place let every participant in our project express their point of view and enrich our thinking. Akiani's ability to confront working hypotheses with the reality on the ground was particularly appreciated.

Laurent Helbert, Head of E-marketing at CRT Normandie

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