Tourism Nova Scotia
In this research and strategy project, we wanted to understand the holistic travel experience and the role of websites such as novascotia.com within that journey. While uncovering pain points and moments of truth, we wanted to identify key opportunities for Tourism Nova Scotia to maximize their digital experience across channels.
Research framework with sticky notes
THE CHALLENGE
Our challenge was in understanding the complexities and nuances of the travel journey and how a Domestic Marketing Organization like Tourism Nova Scotia fits into this experience. The traveller's experience and point of view are ever-changing with the advancements of technology and the tools available.
MY ROLE
I was lead UX researcher and strategist on this project and worked closely with the data & analytics team and the brand strategy team to explore a holistic view of the travel experience. All three teams worked in tandem and made sure to cross-pollinate our research as often as possible.
THE PROCESS
This project was broken down into three main phases: Intake, Research, and Strategy.
In the initial intake phase, we began by looking at all of the secondary research made available to us through Tourism Nova Scotia and other sources. I read through approximately 50 documents and pulled out any insights, mapping them with stickies to a journey framework. This exercise uncovered all the gaps we needed to fill through the primary research we were undertaking in our next phase. While we had a good sense of what people were doing throughout the journey, we wanted to discover more about the why and their emotional state at each step.
The second phase encompassed all the meat and potatoes of this project. I interviewed 40 people from Ontario, who were planning to travel in the next year. The main goal of these interviews was to explore two main areas: why do people research and plan their trips the way they do, and how is the current novascotia.com website experience performing from a usability standpoint. While we were conducting our primary research, we partnered with Google to deploy a travel survey to thousands of travelers within Canada and the United States. Additionally, our data and analytics team explored user behaviour on the website and social media channels to uncover usage patterns among potential travellers.
All of this primary research fed into our journey framework and from that I created a traveller's journey map. This journey map became the foundation of our strategy roadmap, which was the third and final phase of this project. We provided strategic recommendations for brand positioning; how to maximize social media traffic; user experience and website improvements; and advanced targetting through data and analytics.
THE RESULT
Our findings from this research provided some key insights and opportunities for Tourism Nova Scotia. As a direct result of this work, we are currently redesigning the novascotia.com website to enhance the user experience. Using the traveller's journey map as a starting point, we are able to design for solutions that are both relevant and useful. I am currently a product designer involved in this website redesign.