Overland Here
UX Research
This was a concept that my friend approached me about after returning from a month-long overland van trip during which he frequently encountered the pain point of searching for overnight parking.
He wanted to determine if this was a problem that resonated with enough other overlanders and if the hypothesis of a peer-to-peer solution was of interest to them.
Myself and two others, who were the primary stakeholders and collaborated on research
July – Sept 2020
Analyzed a variety of van-related spot recommendation and parking platforms to see how they were posturing towards overlanders with features, customization, community, etc.
Checked out some major players in the peer-to-peer space to see how they were facilitating those connections between the two different user groups
Key features
Started with general questions about their overland vehicle and trip habits, then narrowed to focus on the topic of overnight parking.
It was important to find out what influenced their overnight parking decisions and what would make a paid option appealing.
I conducted a one hour interview with an overlander via Zoom.
He had previously spent over a year as a full-time vanlifer with a strong inclination to not want to pay for parking. For him, part of the ethos of vanlife is the frugal, DIY nature of figuring out his own overnight parking spots. He said it was the amenities that occasionally made it more enticing to pay for overnight parking.
This illustrated some of the differences between full-time vanlifers vs. overlanders who have a permanent residence aside from their vans, and who only take occasional van trips with a finite trip duration.
My collaborators on this project conducted 3 other interviews, so we had a total of 4 interviews with a diverse cross-section of overlanders.
After completing the 1:1 interviews I used Miro to compile the responses and organize them into an affinity map to see what themes and trends emerged.
Key insights
As with the 1:1 interview questions, we opened with general inquires about type of vehicle and trip habits. But at the core of the survey we drilled in on their thoughts around paid overnight parking to see what price range the majority of overlanders would be comfortable with.
Mapping out the survey flow first helped determine the necessary sections and survey logic.
Then I built out the survey with Google Forms and my collaborators posted the link in a number of overlander Facebook groups and got it reposted by a popular vanlife Instagram account.
We received 65 responses to the survey and the responses supported our hypothesis about the challenges that overlanders face with overnight parking and their willingness to pay for parking.
Wake up in the morning not sure yet where they’re going to park that night
Are challenged by a lack of available overnight parking
Are challenged by the cost of paid overnight parking
Would pay to stay overnight in someone’s driveway
Compiled the data from interviews and survey responses into a user persona of a recreational overlander, to help guide design decisions going forward.
For a new overlander user, I considered how it could be beneficial to let them search for spots first so they could experience some of the benefits of the platform. Then prompt them to create an account once they wanted to make a reservation.
A large aspect of this needed to involve building a sense of trust, so enabling the host to see all the overlander’s relevant info up front seemed important.
As of now, the project has not continued beyond some preliminary wireframes. But it was a good excersice for me on the user research side of UX. In hindsight, getting more survey responses to build a larger sample size would be beneficial.
The primary stakeholder felt confident from the research results that it was a viable project to continue to pursue, but none of us had the technical expertise to see it through development.
We also learned of a very similar platform that just launched towards the end of our research phase.
