Ease: Trip-planning reimagined with the power of AI

Jul-Sep 2025

Project typeConceptual, personal work

Category
UIUX, UX research, branding

Project roleSole product designer

Project duration
10 weeks

Overview

Ease is a conceptual project exploring the future of travel planning apps, driven by rapid AI advancements and comprehensive automation. The app streamlines the trip-planning process, minimising users’ time and effort while ensuring trips are highly tailored to their interests. The goal is to let users arrive at their destinations well-prepared and well-informed with minimal planning burden.

Background:

Increasing demand in travelling

Frequent travel has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among younger generations. According to a research by McKinsey & Company, in 2023, millennials and Gen Zers devote on average 29% of their incomes to travel, while taking nearly as many international trips as domestic trips.

During my working holiday year in Europe, I travelled to more than 10 countries with more than 6 different tripmates. I noticed negative travel experiences are often a result of inadequent planning and preparation. However, planning and doing extensive research can be time-consuming and stressful, especially for those who have busy schedules and those who do not enjoy planning.

Research: 6 interviews + competitor analysis

To better understand travellers’ pain points during the trip-planning process, I conducted 6 interviews with travellers aged 20-32.
I conducted competitor analysis to understand what products are popular among travellers for trip planning and monitored comments and reviews on social media to gain a better understanding of what users like and dislike about the products currently available in the market.

Insight #1: Pain points

I found 6 major pain points and 3 major themes regarding trip planning, which is awareness, accessibility and labor:

Theme 1: Awareness

1. Travellers are unaware of essential information they need to know, such as local weather, customs, safety levels, changes in visa requirements, etc. due to their assumptions, unmindfulness or forgetfulness.

Theme 2: Accessibility

1. Travellers face difficulties in finding destinations, accommodations and experiences that match their personal preferences and interests.

2. Travellers find gathering information from local platforms challenging due to their language barrier.

Theme 3: Labor

1. Travellers find it exhausting to do extensive research and consider details such as planning routes and choosing discounted pass options.

2. Travellers find it too labor-intensive to compile and organise information from different platforms.

3. Travellers face decision fatigue when they have too many options and have to rule out some of them.

Insight #2: User archetypes

I also recognised 2 main traveller archetypes among my interviewees, which is Judging (J) and Perceiving (P).

Judging (J):
People with the Judging (J) trait prefers clarity and certainty. They tend to plan ahead of time and follow through their plans. For these individuals, planning a trip isn't a daunting task—they just want to find faster and simpler ways to get it done.

Perceiving (P):
People with the Prospecting (P) trait prefers spontaneity. When it comes to trip planning, Prospecting individuals prefer to figure out as they travel rather than forming concrete plans. However, this approach put them at risk of missing opportunities that requires advance planning, leaving them ill-prepared in certain situations. These individuals need a significant amount of guidance through their planning process.

Persona and user journey mapping

Based on the insights from my user interviews, I created two personas—Kyle and Charlotte, and mapped their journeys from planning to actualising their trip plans. It helps me navigate through the expectation, motivation and concern of target users throughout the design process.

Competitor analysis

Main competitors: Tripit, Wanderlog and Funliday
Through app store ratings and mentions from online forums like Reddit and Quora, I found two most popular travel planner apps worldwide: Tripit and Wanderlog, and the most popular travel planner in Hong Kong: Funliday. I analysed these 3 main competitors and found 2 major gaps in the current market.

Gap#1: Generic and limited recommendations

Rely on popularity metrics: Wanderlog and Funliday allow users to share and receive travel guides/journals, but they only sort content by number of views, and limit filtering options to location. Travellers who have specific interests and those who value culture and authenticity over familiarity are not taken into account.

Rely on information provided by app users: Since the pool of users is limited compared to Google, or social media platforms like Instagram and Youtube, the travel journals published by users are inadequent and less credible.

Gap#2: Incomprehensive features

Travel reminders: Tripit provides the widest range of reminders on arrivals, including flight status updates, check-in reminders, terminal/gate notifications and passport renewal alerts. But none offers reminders for booking tickets to popular attractions, activities and reserving tables at popular restaurants based on user’s itineraries.

Budget management: Both Wanderlog and Funliday allow users to track expenses and and split costs among travel companion. However, none of the competitors offers budgeting advice, such as which discounted passes to purchase in order to maximise savings.

Framing the problem

How might we help travellers plan and prepare for their trips with ease?

Ideation, testing and iteration

Upon three rounds of user testing and iterations, i made 4 major improvements to the design, which are: 1. Optimising user flows; 2. Switching “Before-you-go” to a trip overview; 3. Creating a more customisable save page; 4. Simplifying itinerary layout.

Final solution and design

Overall design system and style guide

I chose an olive green palette for my designs because green evokes calmness and relaxation in colour psychology, aligning with the app's purpose: helping users plan their trips stress-free. This color choice became the foundation for developing a comprehensive design system. The app logo is inspired by clouds, representing my goal to help users travel without burden, like clouds roaming weightlessly in the sky.

High-fidelity wireframes

What could be done if I had more time?

I would create an interactive guided onboarding experience to better educate the users about the app's various functions, as there are a few functions that users are not familiar with.
I would conduct another round of usability studies to verify that previous usability problems have been properly addressed.
I would better adhere to WCAG standards to ensure my design is accessible to everyone.
This project explores conceptual ideas about future possibilities with advancing AI technology. Given more time, I would like to talk to AI specialists and web developers to understand the feasibility of my proposals.

Reflections and takeaways

I designed a wide range of features for this app, as I recognised that merely offering the basic functions already available in the market would not create a unique value proposition. But throughout the process I learnt that it is equally important to prioritise features that are most important to my users given limited time and resources.
I realised that terminology in the interface requires as much careful consideration as visual elements. Subtle differences in wording can significantly affect how users interpret a function, especially for the less common ones.
Simplifying information presentation and prioritising users’ must-haves are crucial to help users navigate more easily on small screens.