Case study · Independent product
Turning saved places into a travel plan
Trailmix connects travel discovery with a day-by-day plan. Richard Duong and I designed and built a flow where travelers swipe through destinations, save places, and organize activities without moving between several apps.
Role
Designer and iOS developer
Timeline
January 2025 to present
Team
Richard Duong and me
Tools
Figma, Jitter, React, SwiftUI, Next.js, AWS
Context
Independent product · Gen Z travel
03 · AT A GLANCE
Research, impact, and lessons.
15
interviews about travel planning
8 min
per planning session, down from 45
53%
week-one retention in early usage
Fifteen interviews explored the gap between saving travel ideas and arranging a trip, and camera rolls full of saved places shaped the visual discovery flow. I designed discovery and daily planning with Richard Duong. Early results recorded planning sessions dropping from 45 minutes to eight and 53% week-one retention, though the study size and method are not documented here. The lesson: build around how travelers already collect ideas, then help them organize. The next test is whether saved places become booked trips.
04 · LOSING THE IDEA
Inspiration and planning lived in different places.
While planning a trip to Japan, I kept turning to short videos for recommendations. But saving a video did little to help me build a day around that place. Fifteen interviews helped us explore the gap between collecting ideas and arranging a trip.
05 · FOLLOWING THE BEHAVIOR
Travelers were already saving visual notes.
Interviewees described camera rolls full of places they might visit. Industry surveys also pointed to social media as a source of travel inspiration.1-3 I used that behavior to shape a visual discovery flow with a direct path into the plan.
Expedia's Trip Matching provided a useful comparison: a social post can become an itinerary. For Trailmix, we explored keeping discovery, saved places, and the day view in one flow.
06 · THE EXPERIENCE
Start exploring before filling in the whole trip.
The initial flow asked for dates, budget, party size, and a name up front. I reduced the start to three questions, with the remaining details editable inside the plan. Travelers could see a destination sooner.
The feed presents one destination at a time and makes saving a gesture. Collections group saved places by location and time; the day view lets travelers add or rearrange activities in context. The early sketches already connected those three screens.
07 · MAKING THE DAY READABLE
Testers couldn't tell where the day started.
The trip home screen had too many competing elements. I replaced the text-heavy overview with a daily view and kept activity changes inside the day they affected.
Trip home
Before
After
Activity detail had a different problem: space without a clear reading order. I grouped the essentials into tags and a compact grid so the first screen answered the practical questions about a place.
Activity detail
Before
After
08 · EARLY RESULTS
Planning got shorter. The next test is a complete trip.
45 → 8 min
planning time in early testing
53%
week-one retention in early usage
Testers described planning as more enjoyable and less stressful. The most useful lesson was to build around their existing habit of saving visual ideas, then make those ideas easier to arrange.
The early numbers need a documented study size and measurement method before they can support broader claims. Next, I would test social-video import and asynchronous group planning, and follow whether saved ideas become booked trips.
09 · SOURCES
Sources
- StudentUniverse via ASTA and Hospitality.today.
- Data Axle 2025 survey, via PR Newswire and Hotel News Resource.
- StudentUniverse via ASTA, Travel Agent Central, and Time Out.
