Meet hele
A conversation-first designed UI created during a 2019 hackathon to make travel planning simple and fun!
Conversation-first design
Named from the Hawaiian word for trip, Hele is the solution for the modern explorer. A traveler who has an open mind, is curious, and wants to see and experience as much of the world as possible.
Hele is a conversation driven interface designed to make travel planning simple and fun. While other travel tools have improved, planning a trip can still be a frustrating experience, requiring multiple tools and time-consuming research for users to make an informed decision.
We know that leisure travelers plan trips as far out as 6 months in advance. But do we know and build tools around their most frequent considerations in planning a trip? The top considerations are: “Bucket List” (destination), price, and weather. In fact, 47% of users consider weather before making a purchase decision for travel.
So, Hele gives the user a streamlined tool to plan and purchase travel. To get started, a user only has to tell where or when they want to travel. Or, chose to be surprised by clicking “surprise me.” We do the rest of the work for users by combining semi-public flight data, weather, and artificial intelligence (AI) to balance their concerns on destination, budget, and weather.
Giving users an opportunity to find the best chance of
experiencing a new or favorite place under the best possible conditions.
The question at its core
The 2019 Weather Channel hackathon asked participants to deliver new product concepts built on weather data.
In an early whiteboard session, I led the team in identifying criteria that a user might consider when planning a trip. Considering these criteria and how much weather plays into travel planning, the team settled on a destination finder. I then proposed flows based upon two user entry points:
I know where I want to go, but when is the best time to go?
I know when I want to go, but where I can go and have good weather?
Conversation drives the visual interface design.
Here, I put the conversation at the core of this experience. But, it’s flexible and extensible enough that it can be a mobile experience, a website, or a chatbot or voice app. Giving the user an easy and natural way to research and buy travel. And, it gives any travel brand an optimal way to let its customers plan and buy travel in a really cool way. (And, it save costs by designing and developing for all eventual modalities through a single, integrated process that I invented.)
Sponsorship Potential
Certainly, the entire app could certainly be licensed (and then customized to fit any brand.
Given all of the open space in the visual design, sponsorship opportunities in the form of contextually relevant ads are ready-made. It’s easy to see where a partner could takeover one or all of the screens throughout the flow.
Through the ‘Surprise Me’ flow, an opportunity for partners like Disney Resorts, Carnival Cruises, etc. to show users package or other deals to entice sales.
But, in true to its conversation-led structure, it’s easy to image either sponsored intents or sponsored utterances. So instead of just a visual takeover, a partner like Southwest could enter the conversation. It could be branded utterances or responses, or even a branded voice that gets a brand into the conversation and under consideration while users are browsing and making travel decisions.