Whats Headout?

Headout is an on-demand mobile marketplace that helps travelers discover & book the most incredible tours, activities, events & local experiences in town for the next 24 hours at exclusive discounted prices. Their mission is to unlock this happier world by connecting high-quality experiences with billions of people, allowing them to be entertained and inspired. They serve millions of transacting customers from 190+ countries every year.

Problem Statement

Can you use AR, visual and audio experiences to create new digital experiences as part of the user journey? The core hypothesis as a company has been that nothing beats real experiences. Can you help augment this?

• Duration: 2 weeks
• Role: Product Designer

Importance of Augmented Reality in the Travel Industry

Before I get into my solution, I wanted to discuss the need for AR in the Travel industry and how it’s helping businesses as well as the users. After researching and reading gazillion articles on Augmented Reality and Travel. These are some of the observations:

1. Easy access to information

• Tourism is a thriving industry. It allows people to open up to new experiences, explore new destinations, and appreciate cultures other than their own. By leveraging the power of augmented reality, you can choose your destinations and experiences in a much more enriching manner.

2. Better Marketing and Advertising

• AR-based advertising and marketing have the potential to drive travelers ‘ decisions since they can visualize properties and services much more interactively.
• AR technology empowers travel companies to provide unique and imaginative narratives, with virtual tours that render the app users almost lifelike experiences.
• Marketing strategies focused on AR boost trust and can convert first-time guests into loyal customers.

3. Enhanced convenience and comfort

• AR-based tourist apps help travelers find the way through arrows and other navigation-related signs into an unfamiliar city.
• An AR app acts as a 24*7 guide and helps eliminate language barriers for international users. It enhances users’ convenience and comfort right from booking tickets and hotels to finding the best destinations for eating, drinks, shopping, and exploring popular tourist destinations.

4. Makes tourist places more attractive

• AR technology allows mobile app developers to incorporate 3D models of places and landmarks of historical significance. Users can have an immersive experience and enjoy journeying through time.
• AR technology is doing wonders in making theme parks and zoos more appealing to visitors. Combining art and science with culture and architecture, the groundbreaking AR technology can make any tourist spot more attractive than ever.

5. Augmented reality has the power to strengthen the four pillars of the tourism industry

• Transportation– Guide visitors to various routes available in an unknown city.
• Accommodation– Provide information about reviews and other important aspects of hotels.
• Catering– Inform travelers about the types of food available at different restaurants.
• Tourist spots– Ensure that tourist destinations are more attractive with an enhanced 3D experience.

It has been reported that the interactive content from travel brands influences over 78 percent of traveler’s decisions.

Solution

I will give you a tour of my case study and explain how Augmented Reality can be used to create new digital experiences and enhance the overall user experience at every stage from Pre-purchase experience to Post Purchase experience.

Brace yourself, your tour starts now

Experience 1: Pre-purchase

There are a lot of times when you are not sure if you really wanna go for a tour, don’t worry we will help you remove the uncertainty and give you a glimpse of what it feels to experience the tour right from the comfort of your phones.

We present to you the Headout Magic Door.

• Simply place the magic door anywhere and walk towards it.
• Look around and get a feel of the tour experience. Sound effects like Music, crowd, or even wind sounds can be added to give it a more realistic feel.
• Have different views of the location ( day, night, events like the sound show, new year, etc)

“Jo dikhta hai, wahi bikta hai” (Loosely translated, it means — “what is visible, sells”.).Its the packaging of the tour that helps user make up their minds and help drive the sales up.

💸 How does this help the Business?

• Getting a glimpse of what they can expect would help reduce the uncertainty from the user’s mind and helps them make a decision faster
• People always wanted a Magic Door and travel the world. Calling it the Magic door will draw in the required attention and build up the hype and lure people in.
• Incorporating an AR experience in the pre-purchase stage improves the overall packaging of the tour, and offer the consumer an interactive visual experience.

Experience 2: After buying the ticket

Once you get your tour ticket, that’s where all the fun begins.

Simply scan your ticket or select your online ticket to see the magic

Use case 1: It takes you to the meeting point/ later can be used to track the tour guide.

Use case 2: If there is no Tour guide, you can have a virtual tour. It can help you with everything from

• Picture spots
• Food places
• Things to do
• Learning
• Games
• Pop-ups
• Tour navigation

Get everything to make your tour experience something worth remembering throughout your life.

💸 How does this help the Business?

• Increase user engagement.
• A major problem that people face is not being able to get to the tour meeting point or locate the tour guide. This would help address that issue.
• People absolutely love pop-ups, people absolutely love food, people absolutely love pictures, etc and hence this would create an eagerness in them and would enhance the overall tour experience of the user

Experience 3: During the tour

Attraction 1: Navigation and Guided Tour

People tend to get lost or sometimes miss out on some spots during the tour. This leads to a bad tour experience. A simple solution to this problem: a simple guided navigation system.

Still not convinced?

How about a tour from Mickey Mouse or one of his friends at Disneyland. A tour from Mickey mouse and his friends are gonna blow your children’s minds.

• Get a tour of the entire museum, monument, etc, and never miss out on any locations.
• Spent more time exploring the landmark with your loved ones instead of wasting time roaming around aimlessly looking for things.
• Find amazing picture spots to click amazing pictures and share them with your friends.
• The guide will give you a tour of around the entire landmark and you can even interact with him by asking some predefined common questions like Restaurant suggestions, Photo spots suggestions, Parade timings, etc.

💸 How does this help the Business?

• Improves the overall experience of the user
• Solves the big problem of the user not being able to find the meeting points, getting lost, etc.

Attraction 2: Information and Learning

We firmly believe that even when you’re traveling and exploring, learning shouldn’t stop but at the same time, we understand that learning could get boring at times especially for children. Get the most out of your tour with Headout.

• Simply click on the touchpoints and get all the information you need.
• As technology progresses, we can add a feature where things come alive and we can interact with them ( something like “Night at the museum”)

💸 How does this help the Business?

• Learn interactively while you explore without heading to google again and again, giving the user another reason to use Headout and increasing customer engagement.

Attraction 3: Exclusive filters for pictures

Who doesn’t love pictures? Who doesn’t love filters? Who doesn’t love sharing them with friends?

Click amazing pictures with filters based on location.

• Picture sharing apps like Snapchat, Instagram have the same set of filters that you use everywhere
• Headout gives you new and unique filters at every location.
• You might not get filters that were available at Eiffel Tower in Istanbul or any other place. So travel around the world and click amazing pictures with new and unique filters at every location.
• Another feature that could be added here is that people could write custom texts on the monument(like in the Big Ben picture) and then send them to their friends and family like gift cards, greeting cards, etc.

💸 How does this help the Business?

• Free Marketing, people click pictures and share them with friends and family. These filters would attract others to try Headout as well
• Pictures and filters are likely to lure people to book more tours and travel to get more such pictures, hence an increase in sales.

Attraction 4: Games and Incentives

There are instances when exploring gets way too boring for kids and that leads to the overall mood and experience.

How about we make it a bit interesting and fun for you?

• Scavenger hunt across the monument/tour to keep you engaged as well as you learn throughout.
• Simply follow the Headout Blimp and find the items.
• Collect all the items and then get a small surprise souvenir for the guide/monument souvenir shop.

💸 How does this help the Business?

• Children often get bored at tours especially at museums but they absolutely love Games and prizes. This could be a luring factor for parents to book with Headout to keep their children busy and engaged
• Giving a small souvenir on completion could act as an incentive and a driving factor to complete the game as fast as possible. Collaborations can be made with museums where they give out a small souvenir at the end. This would help increase their sales as well as our sales
• Free Marketing and promotion

This game would automatically lure other kids to the museum when one of their friends tell them about the game and the prize. It would invoke the “ Mummy mujhe bhi chaiye/Mummy mujhe bhi jaana hai” emotion and hence would increase the sales.

Experience 4: Post the tour

Remember the pictures that we clicked during the tour?

We introduce a new way to share pictures and cherish memories forever.

• Click pictures at any place and pin the picture at that very location.
• When you visit the place again, you’ll be able to see that very picture pinned at the same location. You can even share the picture with your family and friends and they would be able to see that picture there.
• Suppose a person visited Burj Al Arab, Dubai in 2018 and pinned a picture there. When he returns in 2020 he would be able to see that very picture at the pinned location. This would be an amazing experience for people where they come back and look back at the pictures and how they have changed and would help them cherish those memories.

💸 How does this help the Business?

• This would hit users at an emotional level and they would be more likely to use our app
• We win user’s hearts and goodwill. A happy satisfied user is something that businesses want and hence this would obviously help the business in the long run.
• Free Marketing and promotion

People buy emotions not things

Experience 5: Bonus

Attraction 1: Street View

Walking on the street aimlessly and not sure about what you wanna do?

• Have a look at the various places to explore( tours, restaurants, coffee shops, gift shops, etc)
• Once you select a location, you’ll see the head out blimp marking the location and waiting for you. This could also be used to give out discount offers in an interactive way at times.

Attraction 2: Covid

Covid 19 is a part of our lives now, traveling shouldn’t stop due to Covid 19 but appropriate safety measures have to be taken. There are times when people are so engrossed spending time with their family and friends that they miss out on the basic safety measures.

• It will alert you by vibrating or sound when you aren’t maintaining the required social distance or someone without a mask is approaching you.
• Users can toggle this on/off based on the environment of the place as per their need.

Attraction 3: SOS

Crime is at an all-time high and there are times when you get stuck in a situation while traveling and cant figure out how to get help.

• There are a lot of times when you are traveling and feel unsafe( Ex: You’re in a different country and someone starts following you and you are not sure what to do)
• Simply open the AR feature on Headout and act as if you’re clicking a picture( clicking a picture is very normal for a tourist and won’t tip the person) and simply click the SOS button to get the required help.
• SOS floating button is always placed at the extreme top right corner of the AR environment to prevent accidental clicks by the user.

That’s all

This project was done as a part of the 10kdesigners Masterclass program. The problem statement for this was given by Headout.

Thank you for taking out time and reading this case study. I would love to hear your feedback on the product or the case study. Feel free to reach out to me onLinkedin or Twitter.

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