Nomio

Crafting a personalized trip planner app leveraging AI

Project at a Glance

The problem:
Researching and creating the itinerary (aka the “trip plan”) is typically the most time-consuming, overwhelming, and stressful part of planning a leisure trip.

The solution:
Nomio uses a few prompts and AI to generate a trip itinerary for you as a customizable starting point, saving you hours of time, effort, and research. Plus, it’s collaborative so you can share, comment, and get feedback from your travel buddies to create a trip plan that you’ll all love.

My role:
UX/Product Designer UX/Product Designe

Team size:
Independent academic project, so 1 person - just me, myself and I!

Timeline:
3 weeks

Skills Design
Prototyping, wireframing, creating low-to-high fidelity mockups, empathy map and persona creation, storyboards, user journey, competitor analysis, user flows, sketches, discovery interviews, affinity mapping, data analysis, guerrilla usability testing


Tools:
Figma; Figjam; Google Slides, Zoom and slides, Airtable

Planning a leisure trip can feel overwhelming, especially when trying to create an itinerary that works for a solo traveler - and it only gets trickier as you add more people to the mix.

The Goal

To create a user-friendly app that streamlines leisure trip planning by generating customizable itineraries, saving users time and effort while allowing collaboration.

Users are those who travel for leisure at least once per year.

They should and take the lead on planning the travel during that timeframe.

I had some constraints to consider:

  • Due to tight project timelines, interview participants and guerrilla usability testing partiicipants were a convenience sample (i.e., a "friends and family" recruit), although all of them satisfied the recruiting requirements and were the target users of this app.

  • I wanted to create an app design that was technologically feasible (given known, common technologies today) within the next 6 months.

Design Thinking double diamond UX Process to create the concept of this travel app.
The phases I went through were: Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver.

I was leading and performing each step of the user-centered design process. Specifically, I:

  • DESIGN

    Wrote a compelling problem statement and value proposition to define project goals.
    Designed all deliverables from scratch, including:
-Storyboard and user scenario.
-Competitor analysis and user flow.
-Sketches and low-to-high fidelity designs.
-Iterated on designs based on user feedback
    Created a comprehensive style guide and UI style tile

  • RESEARCH

    Created a proto-persona
    Planned and conducted all user interviews, and analyzed and synthesized data
    Developed an empathy map and journey map
    Created a data-backed persona
    Drafted usability test plans
    Led all testing, analyzed results to prioritize changes, and implemented design adjustments based on findings

Phase 1, Discover: User Research

Initial discovery research uncovered significant and similar pain points in the leisure travel planning process.

Conducting 5 in-depth interviews uncovered that, for travelers, planning trip itineraries was a large task, one that:

Participants outlined the steps they took to plan a trip and shared their process cross-referencing, compiling lists, and doing lots of research to make sure they saw what they wanted to see, did what they wanted to do, and eat/drank where they wanted.

They described the overwhelming nature of trip planning and the pressure it brings, especially when organizing for others. Each additional person adds complexity and increases the challenge of meeting everyone’s expectations.

These insights shaped the development of an empathy map, capturing their frustrations and emotions to guide the design process.

Phase 2, Define: Synthesis

Using Leslie as the protagonist, I developed a storyboard to outline the steps of her experience;

And a journey map to visualize it more comprehensively.

These rich qualitative interviews helped me define a user persona, Leslie, who values optimizing her limited vacation time but dislikes the hours of planning it usually requires.

It also allowed me to define the problem statement:

Streamlining the research process for leisure travelers seeking enjoyable activities and dining options will lead to time saved, more efficient experiences, and increased trip satisfaction.

This allowed me to define Nomio's value:

Nomio is a personalized, collaborative, and intelligent itinerary generator to solve the problem of spending excessive time researching and creating a great itinerary for leisure travel planners and their companions.

Phase 3, Develop: Ideation & Prototyping

A detailed competitor analysis revealed that while no single app had fully popularized Nomio's concept,
some apps included partial elements (e.g., TripAdvisor).

Certain features, such as offline access to generated itineraries, emerged as table stakes for the market.
This research laid the foundation for brainstorming features and prioritizing them based on user needs.

Using insights from concept/usability testing, I developed a prioritization matrix of severity vs. frequency of usability problems to inform design improvements.

The social nature of the app took shape as participants expressed a strong desire for tools to share itineraries, gather input, vote on plans, and leave comments. 



Usability testing also revealed that a short questionnaire to create a "starting point" itinerary
was highly effective, reducing the user's cognitive burden by shifting the task
from creating a plan from scratch to adjusting a pre-made one.

A style tile ensured consistency across all visual elements.

A bold blue and purple gradient evoked trust and exploration, while the heart-shaped logo reflected a passion for travel. Poppins and Playfair Display fonts provided a balanced combination of modern readability and elegance.

Based on testing between each stage of the design process, the design evolved and incorporated user feedback throughout.

This process enabled us to progress from sketches to low-fi, mid-fi, and ultimately high-fi designs (with a selection of screens shown).

Phase 4, Deliver

Negative feedback on the app's original names, Conci (in low-fi) and Wanderwise (in mid-fi). However, the final name, Nomio, received a positive response

Copy was changed to make it's meaning clearer, such as "Updates" to "notifications" on the navigation bar at the bottom of the home screen

The budget screen became optional, to allow a user to see what Nomio generated first without limiting it and then adjusting parameters accordingly.

Above is a video walkthrough of the Nomio app prototype.

So What? Results & Outcomes

Overall, user research feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

Every participant recognized the app as fulfilling a genuine need, with many expressing a desire for such a solution. Most were unaware of competitors offering anything similar, highlighting a potential market gap.

With a strong launch, this app could deliver significant user value and capitalize on this opportunity.

Lessons Learned

Through this project, we learned that...

  • 1) Creating something easy to use is challenging, especially when breaking down complex user flows and processes!

  • 2) Investing more time upfront in sketching and low-fidelity phases streamlined later stages, saving hours of iteration during high-fidelity design.

  • 3) The design thinking process ensures the user remains central throughout. Following each step comprehensively allowed real user needs to drive the design.

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