Mei loves to ski and travel with friends. She does both activities several times a year. She does the majority of the trip planning for her friends.
Why/How we interviewed her: Mei does almost all the planning for group trips that she plans. This includes international trips, along with ski trips to Tahoe. What hypothesis we tested: An avid planner doesn't need a new platform to help her plan. She has already optimized her planning process, so it would be difficult find a way to wedge a new product into her process. What we really wanted to learn: What tools does a group trip planner need to solve their problem? What we learned from this interview: Although Mei has optimized everything with shared spreadsheets. The one thing that a spreadsheet cannot take care of is payments. She collects money up front now, and hounds people, but feels this isn’t optimal. She previously had many payment problems, but her current system has prevented non-payment from people. If there was a platform that could remove the hassle of collecting payments she would use it. Currently she uses, cash, check, Venmo, various bank payments systems, Paypal and even has Square. Although, she is optimized around receiving payments she can still have trouble collecting. What surprised us: Mei was interested in planning app, even before talking about the automatic payment portion. If something can be done easier than a spreadsheet, she would take advantage of it. Planners want better tools that would help people. Other interesting outcomes: Mei got excited about some mockups of a tool that could help non-planners know what they need to do. In her experience many people who go on group trips don’t realize all the steps that are needed to be completed prior to the trip. For a planner it is frustrating when other people assume everything will be planned out for them and they miss individual steps in the process, such as buying plane tickets for a trip.
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AuthorThe Orca team is a group of second year Haas MBAs dedicated to bringing fun back to the logistics of group travel Archives
November 2016
Link to Full Interview Notes |