UX Research · Information Architecture · Prototyping · UI Design

GoTravel set out to redefine how travelers discover and plan vacations. Instead of just building a booking engine, they aimed to build a curated, story-driven platform for exploration. The challenge was  to combine Airbnb-style discovery with Nomad List-level community insights, while making it easy for users across different age groups and tech familiarity to find their next destination.

Key Challenges:

• Fragmented competitor landscape: Airbnb excelled in visuals, Nomad List in data, but users needed both.

• Confusing flows for discovery vs. decision-making.

• Balancing visual inspiration with functional planning tools.

• Designing for multiple user archetypes, from digital nomads to retired travelers.

Goals:

• Map a unified user journey that bridges dreaming, discovering, and booking.

• Validate assumptions through user research and benchmarking.

• Create a flexible IA and MVP prototype aligned with user needs.

• Design a clean visual language ready for scale.

Approach & Process

• Clear, validated information architecture built through card sorting and similarity matrix mapping.

• Strategic benchmarking against Airbnb, Nomad List, and others to define unique positioning.

• Developed personas across demographics (young solo travelers vs. retired couples) to drive decision-making.

• Delivered low → mid → high-fidelity wireframes, usability-tested and refined iteratively.

• Created a full UI kit, moodboard, and clickable prototype ready for dev handoff and stakeholder presentation.

GoTravel was a lesson in balance: between information and emotion, clarity and exploration, structure and storytelling. It reinforced how crucial it is to design for mindset and not just for features. We wanted to help users move seamlessly from curiosity to commitment. By grounding design decisions in user research and validating early through testing, we didn’t only build on aesthetics, but with the user in mind.