In collaboration with Aarti Ruparell, Aditi Surana, Alonso Castro, and LaTricia Watford. My role in this process was user research and conversation mapping/development.

With a combined passion for voice user interfaces and travel, my collegues and I developed an artificial intelligent assistant that prepares the target user to plan their packing essentials based on where they are traveling.

The user interacts with Trek by informing the location and dates of travel. Trek will then pull in weather and cultural data from API platforms and verbal display packing suggestions based on the output of results.

Research

In our initial research, we planned out the process of what our ideal user will experience and which applications the user interacts with within this domain.

Our ideal user may use applications like Weather Travel Fashion to identify the ideal outfit for current weather conditions or Google Destinations to plan a trip.

Based on our research, we chose a voice user interface as the ideal interaction, because the focus was on the user packing for their travels while they are in their home environment.

Design Thinking

Activities

• trip is in the process of planning or already planned
• user is packing for trip the evening before departure

Environment

• Atmosphere: home environment, bedroom, living room
• AI device is placed in a static location

Interaction

• Human to Voice User Interface (AI)

Objects

• Voice UI device, suitcase, toiletries, clothing, accessories

Users

• Business Professional
• Millennial
• Vacationer
• Frequent Traveler
• Non-spontaneous Planner

User Profile

Sarah Smith

35 year old woman, director at a network agency.

Spends time traveling the world (i.e Tokyo, San Francisco, and London). Her company will notify her that she has to fly to another city at a moment's notice.

Setting up for each trip can be a challenge because she is not always sure about the location's climate or customs.

She currently uses various travel applications to plan trips.

User Journey

Conversation Mapping

Conversation is visually mapped out with a sample interaction between the user and the voice interface. Also mapped out are the entities for the VUI possible outcomes.

Physical Prototype

The tech was built with Raspberry Pi with an attached microphone. The IBM Watson SDK was integrated after designing the conversation and activating speech-to-text and text-to-speech within the application.

The tech was then integrated into a physical design that emulates a potential voice interface design in the future as a visual component could be added within future iterations.