Planit
Making someday today with an all-in-one trip planning dashboard
During a college internship in St. Louis, I was excited to explore the city but overwhelmed by figuring out what to do. After endless scrolling, I realized I was spending more time searching than experiencing. My friends were facing the same struggle—that’s when it clicked.
Project Type
Student Capstone Project
Role
Solo UI/UX Designer
Time
16 Weeks
Tools
Figma, Zoom
ideation
A centralized hub for collaborative trip planning and discovery
Trip planning can be frustrating, but with Planit, it doesn't have to be. Experience an all-in-one hub where you can collaborate with fellow attendees through voting, surveys, and suggestions. Share your trip with the world and inspire others to explore.
problem
Travelers are spending too much time planning and not enough time living
constraints
Five stages of planning
According to Expedia Group, there are five stages in the trip planning process: Inspiration, Research, Planning, Booking, and Post Purchase. For this project, I’ll be focussing on Inspiration, Research, and Planning stages where the traveler is more focussed on discovery and itinerary building.
secondary research
Fatigued and hesitant
This secondary research is to assess the current space of digital tourism, explore the intrinsic behavior of users in the travel space, and determine ways to centralize and expedite trip planning.
Trip Planning is Extensive and Fragmented
On average, travelers spend 71 days planning & researching trips, consulting an average of 141 sources
Importance of Trust and Social Proof
Users find it hard to trust one source and depend on recommendations & online reviews
Decision Fatigue from Too Many Choices
The quote, "more options are better", is only true up to 22 choices; beyond that, users experience decision paralysis.
Digital tourism is optimized for conversion, not for planning
In the digital tourism space, there is no widely-used application focused solely on trip planning. Instead, the current solution is to rely on a variety of apps to effectively plan their trips.
Yelp
Highlights key information
Reviews and ratings
Map display
No planning feature
TikTok
User-generated content
Curated algorithm
Quick video-only format
Hard to save information
Google Docs
Customizability
Easy to collaborate
Daunted by blank canvas
Hard to determine direction
TripAdvisor
Trip planning feature
No user-generated trips
Ad-heavy
Limited group planning
user interviews
It wasn’t just me
Sending out a Screener Survey, I was very lucky to talk to 6 users who have experience in trip planning. After synthesizing over 350+ data points from my user interviews using affinity diagramming and empathy maps, there were 2 key insights
Insight #1: There are a lot of resources but few tools for trip planning
There was a common workflow among my 6 interviewees in how they approached trip planning in today's travel space.
Current solution for trip planning
One interviewee, usually enthusiastic about travel, put it best: “I forget I’m supposed to enjoy it.” This insight reveals how the fragmented planning process is not only taxing but often repelling. Despite countless resources, there’s a lack of meaningful tools for what truly matters—planning.
Insight #2: In group travel, collaboration and communication are key to trip satisfaction and excitement.
Starting this project, I anticipated tension around current trip planning methods. However, interviews revealed a major overlooked factor driving issues in the travel space: group travel.
“The most vocal and opinionated individuals get to lead decisions . . . when you cater your trip to the most unreasonable people, the rest of the group remains unhappy”
“I enjoyed the trip because I had a hand in planning it“
“I really wish I had more opposition when they came to like ideas, because I feel like it's a lot of like, people not having an opinion.”
ideation
How might we centralize trip planning to enhance collaboration and communication among attendees?
With the goal of centralizing trip planning, I outlined a high-level, three-step process for the project:
Discover
Plan Together
Go
User interviews informed my decision to prioritize a desktop experience, as 5 out of 6 users primarily used laptops or desktops for planning and relied on mobile only for on-site reference. Based on this insight, I focused on developing key features for desktop, while creating a few mobile screens to demonstrate how the app can be used on the go.
Sketches and Flow Diagrams
After referring to my competitors and evaluating their interfaces based on heuristics and key features, I proceeded to sketch the key flows for each stage.
solutions
Intersection between collaboration and innovation
Keeping centralization, organization, and collaboration in mind, I designed a 0-1 trip planning application that introduces new ways to plan your next adventure.
Trip Dashboard
Users can organize trips, assign roles, and browse or share curated travel plans, building trust and simplifying planning with user-generated content.
Pre-Trip Survey
Planners can send a pre-trip survey to gather attendees' expectations and restrictions, then view the results to align trip plans with key preferences.
Suggestion Block
Allows users to reserve time for an activity with an undecided location and suggest potential venues from the Trip Collection.
Voting
Planners can request votes on location suggestions, enabling users to vote and allowing the planner to finalize a choice or call a revote if results are unclear.
In-App Navigation
The mobile app allows users to access trip details and get directions all in one place, eliminating the need to transfer information from other apps.
testing & revisions
Aligning Terminology with User Expectations
To evaluate my designs, I conducted two rounds of moderated usability testing, totaling 10 sessions and generating valuable feedback. These sessions surfaced several UX and UI issues, most of which I was able to revise. However, the most impactful revision involved renaming the Suggestion Block—a change that proved essential due to the high level of user confusion with the original name.
Renaming Time Block to Suggestion Block
Initially, the feature was named Time Block to allow users to reserve time for an activity without a set location (e.g., “lunch from 12-1”). However, in initial testing, users misunderstood Time Block, associating it with an untouchable period of time, which conflicted with the intended purpose.
Misleading terminology
80% of users skipped tour
When asked, users suggested alternative names: Event, Brainstorm, TBD Block, Activity, and Suggestion Block.
Improved clarity
Reduced cognitive load
Better alignment with user expectations
I ultimately chose Suggestion Block for its clarity and directness, stripping away any confusing terminology. After renaming, 80% of participants confirmed that “Suggestion Block” would have made the concept clearer from the start.
conclusion
Many to one
This project gave me the opportunity to simplify the overwhelming and fragmented process of trip planning. By centralizing everything into one cohesive platform, I tackled key user pain points like information overload, lack of collaboration, and trust issues. With features like the Trip Dashboard, Pre-Trip Survey, Suggestion Block, and in-app navigation, Planit has proven to make planning more efficient, enjoyable, and collaborative.
After discussing the concept with 12 users, they all expressed a strong desire for a solution like this, highlighting how much it would improve their own trip planning experiences.
reflection
This is just the beginning
Approaching the travel space was tough. Through this project I’ve learned so much and understood the intricacies and the importance of each stage of design. From secondary research to high-fidelity prototypes, there were a lot of firsts I had as a designer in this project. If I could do it all over again, I'd
Establish a clear and defined information architecture early on
Focus on MVP and flush out key features
Keep a single page cheat sheet of all my findings for easy reference
Nevertheless, I was able to successfully execute an idea that I've been sitting on for so long. Seeing it come to fruition has been the most rewarding aspect of this project.
If I had more time
Further Testing
Perform further testing on the terminology of Suggestion Block and voting feature
Task Management
Allow planners to assign tasks to attendees, increasing collaboration and ownership.
Version Control
Explore the idea of an activity log where users can track changes, see who made them, and revert to previous versions.
PROTOTYPE
Final prototype
Let's keep the party going!
