WAYPOINTS
Reducing Complexity for Travel Planners and Increasing User Satisfaction by 37%
A mobile app for compiling travel details into a concise, easy-to-read itinerary.
Year
2024
Duration
6 Weeks
Role
Sole UX/UI Designer
Background
Popular travel planning apps compromise usability by overloading users with features.
In 2023, I planned a two-week trip to Italy for myself and two others. As the trip began to take shape, I noticed our plans were scattered across many sources. To help get myself organized, I downloaded a popular travel app.

The moment I opened it, I felt lost. The cluttered interface lacked clear hierarchy and, within minutes, I gave up.

I stuck with my spreadsheets—and had an amazing time in Italy—but my experience with that app stayed with me. I couldn’t help but wonder how many others felt the same frustration.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we design a travel planning app that prioritizes simplicity?
RESEARCH
Users want help but they won’t adopt tools that feel too cumbersome or difficult to use.
To test my hypothesis that users find existing travel planning tools frustrating, I conducted a competitive analysis and user interviews. This research confirmed the following assumptions:
  • Users prefer to have all of their travel plans in a single place.
  • Not all users are willing to put in the effort required to manually consolidate their plans.
  • Users that turn to travel apps for help are met with overcrowded interfaces and steep learning curves, ultimately driving them away.
“This app is pretty clunky because there are *so* many features.”
USER REVIEW of A Popular App
User Interview Participant
research ACTIVITiES & OUTPUTS
To better understand the tools and methods users rely on to organize their trips, I conducted five remote Zoom interviews with recent international travelers. The script included questions such as:
  • How do you currently organize your travel plans?
  • What frustrations or challenges have you experienced when using travel planning apps or tools?
  • When looking at an overview of a trip, what information do you consider the most important?
  • Can you describe a time when managing your itinerary felt difficult or overwhelming?
Through an affinity mapping exercise, I identified the following themes from user interview results:
  • Users rely on multiple tools and apps to plan a single trip.
  • Many users have had negative experiences with apps designed to assist with travel planning.
  • Users prioritize simplicity, clarity, and intuitive design in travel planning tools.
  • Users recognize the value of consolidating all travel plans in one accessible location.
  • Users want automation to simplify and streamline trip planning.
To identify additional pain points and unmet user needs, I conducted a competitive analysis of three popular travel apps. As part of this process, I reviewed dozens of user comments on Google Play, uncovering three key insights:
  • Complexity creates overwhelm. Popular apps are packed with features that make their interfaces difficult for users to navigate.
  • A good idea can be ruined by poor execution. Users love the idea of auto-importing booking details but this process is unreliable, leaving many users frustrated.
  • Users want flexibility. Travel plans naturally evolve and users need tools that support planning from the initial idea to the final day of their trip.
The following two archetypes capture key research insights and represent the core users of Waypoints.
  • Meticulous travel planners who systematically document their travel plans using spreadsheets or other digital tools.
  • Laid back travelers who like the idea of a very organized trip but value convenience above all.
PLANNING
We want to minimize the effort required to compile plans and present itineraries in a clear, concise format.
Research results revealed two core user needs, which served as the focus for the design of Waypoints:
  • The Waypoints app should help users speed up the process of organizing their travel plans.
  • It should also reduce the burden of parsing through complex, detailed itineraries.
“Manual data entry is a huge frustration. I just want everything in one place automatically.”
User Interview Participant
User Interview Participant
PLANNING ACTIVITiES & OUTPUTS
To visualize the app’s structure, I created a sitemap with simplicity as the guiding principle.

To ensure that users will immediately understand the interface and find what they need as soon as they open the app, I kept the navigation as minimal as possible.
To prioritize key functionalities addressing core user needs, I created a feature roadmap. The first iteration of the app is built on the following core features:
  • Trip creation and management
  • Itinerary editing and organization
  • Booking and reservation import
  • Flexible itinerary display
  • Map integration
To visualize how users would navigate the app, I created user flows for following core user actions:
  • Creating a trip
  • Adding plans to an itinerary
  • Revising plans on an itinerary
Wireframes & mockups
Early sketches focus on offering multiple ways to view itineraries.
“I have fairly large trip plan and sometimes it's unbearable trying to scroll through everything.”
USER REVIEW of A Popular App
Users have different preferences for how their itineraries are organized and displayed. Striking the right balance between flexibility and scanability on itinerary views will be critical for success.
To expedite data entry, booking details can be scanned from a photo or document.
“The auto-importer misses a lot and it won't let you enter bookings manually.
USER REVIEW of A Popular App
Some travel apps access user emails to auto-populate itinerary items from booking confirmations. While the idea is popular, users find it unreliable and some are uneasy about sharing email access.

Rather than granting us email access, Waypoints users will be able to upload or capture a photo of their booking confirmation, which the app will scan to create an itinerary entry.
To maintain flexibility, users are asked for the length of their trip rather than exact dates.
“The app wouldn't let me add plans without knowing the exact date, time, and location.”
USER REVIEW of A Popular App
Sometimes users want to put together a sample itinerary for a trip they haven’t booked yet. Other apps make this impossible by requiring exact dates and times.

To maintain flexibility for these users, they are first asked how many days they will be traveling. They can optionally add their departure date on the following screen.
DESIGN ACTIVITiES & OUTPUTS
TESTING & ITERATION
Initial usability tests suggest a strong foundation with areas for improvement.
Five users participated in a remote, unmoderated user test created with Lyssna. Participants were asked to perform the following tasks while using the prototype:
  • Create a new trip
  • Add a plan to an existing trip
  • Edit a plan from an existing trip
Date selection was updated with a more familiar design pattern.
During testing, users were asked to enter their trip length as part of the trip creation flow, after which only the departure date was required.

This confused some users who expected to select both start and end dates on the calendar.

To improve clarity, users are now first asked if they know their travel dates—if they do, they proceed directly to selecting a full date range. If not, they enter their trip length and continue with a dateless itinerary.
Before
After
Navigation items were reconfigured to prioritize the most important actions.
The large plus button in the bottom navigation has two functions: Creating a trip and adding a plan. In the prototype used for testing, these actions were contextual and caused confusion for users.

To resolve this, I removed the button from the bottom navigation and introduced a floating action button. Tapping it now reveals both actions at once, making them available to users at any point in their journey.
Before
After
Results
Users rated the visual clarity and organization of the Waypoints app 
37% higher than familiar planning tools.
The average user rating for enjoyment of this app was 9.7 out of 10.
The ease of completing tasks received an average user score of 9 out of 10.
Final Thoughts
Waypoints set out to make travel planning effortless by keeping things simple and user-friendly. While that goal was achieved, user feedback has highlighted additional features that could enhance the experience, such as real-time notifications, collaborative planning, and expense tracking. The challenge moving forward is finding a way to integrate those features without sacrificing simplicity.