Wanderlust Travel Planning Platform

The Problem

Planning group trips is notoriously frustrating. Wanderlust had a basic itinerary builder, but groups of friends or families would still resort to chaotic group chats, spreadsheets, and endless back-and-forth. The platform had high sign-up rates but low engagement — people would create an account, start a trip, and then abandon it.

The challenge: Make group trip planning feel collaborative and fun instead of administrative and stressful.

Research & Discovery

• Diary studies (8 groups over 4 weeks) documenting real trip planning behavior
• Competitive analysis of 12 travel planning tools
• Pain point mapping from 500+ app store reviews of competitors
• Contextual inquiry observing 6 groups planning trips in real-time

Key insight: The biggest friction wasn’t features — it was coordination. People needed to feel like they were planning together, not taking turns on a shared document.

Design Process

Real-Time Collaboration

Designed a multiplayer experience inspired by tools like Figma and Miro. Multiple users could browse, suggest, and vote on destinations, accommodations, and activities simultaneously with live cursors and presence indicators.

Decision Framework

Created a structured voting and prioritization system. Instead of endless debate in chat, groups could propose options, set criteria, and vote — with the platform surfacing the consensus automatically.

Mood Board First

Replaced the traditional “search and book” flow with a collaborative mood board. Groups start by sharing inspiration — photos, links, vibes — and the platform suggests matching destinations and experiences.

Smart Budgeting

Built a transparent group budget tracker that automatically splits costs, tracks who’s paid what, and adjusts in real-time as the itinerary changes.

Before & After

Before: Solo itinerary builder, no real-time collaboration, separate chat for discussion, manual budget tracking.

After: Multiplayer planning canvas, integrated voting, mood board discovery, automatic budget splitting, timeline view.

Results

• 67% increase in trips completed (from creation to booking)
• 3.2x increase in average group size per trip
• 45% reduction in time from first visit to first booking
• Featured in TechCrunch as “the Figma of travel planning”
• User base grew from 50K to 320K in 6 months post-launch