TripBoard - Group Trip
Planning App
Role
UX/UI Designer
Timeframe
4 Months
Designing a collaborative mobile app that helps groups plan trips, manage budgets, and make decisions together.
Overview
Planning a trip with friends is exciting — but the planning process often becomes chaotic for the person responsible for organizing everything.
Important information gets lost in group chats, budgets become confusing, and decisions take hours of discussion.
TripBoard was designed to simplify this process by creating a shared workspace where groups can plan trips, track expenses, and make decisions collaboratively.
The goal was to reduce planning stress while keeping everyone involved in the process.
The Problem
Group travel planning often relies on multiple disconnected tools such as messaging apps, spreadsheets, and notes.
This creates several problems:
Important information get scattered across different platforms
One person usually becomes the default planner
Expense tracking becomes confusing
Group decisions take too long
As a result, the excitement of the trip is often replaced by planning fatigue and coordination stress.
Research & Key Insights
To understand how people plan group trips today, I conducted:
4 semi-structured interviews
Secondary research on travel planning behaviors
Heuristic review of tools like Wanderlog, Stippl, and Splitwise
Several important patterns emerged.
#1 Insight - Expense Conversations are Uncomfortable
Participants often rely on one person to pay for group expenses, which leads to awkward conversations when asking others to pay them back.
#2 Insight - Group Decisions Take Too Long
Simple decisions such as choosing restaurants or activities often turn into long discussions.
#3 Insight - Information is Scattered
Trip details are spread across messages, screenshots, spreadsheets, and notes, making it difficult to find important information.
#4 Insight - One Person Carries the Mental Load
A single person often ends up managing the entire planning process.
#5 Insight - Most Participants Want Simplicity
Many group members want to stay informed but do not want to actively manage the trip logistics.
Design Strategy
Based on the research, the product focused on three design principles.
Shared Trip Dashboard
Centralize all trip information in one place so that everyone can easily see the itinerary, expenses, and updates.
Faster Group Decision-Making
Introduce simple polling features that allow groups to quickly vote on options.
Transparent Expense Tracking
Automatically track shared expenses and clearly show who owes what.
Key Features
Design Process
User Flow
Two separate flows were designed.
Planner Flow - Allows planners to create trips, add expenses, and manage details.
Tripmate Flow - Provides simplified access to trip information and decisions.
Wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframes helped explore:
trip creation flow
expense tracking interface
polling interactions
These wireframes focused on clarity and information hierarchy.
Usability Testing
Two rounds of usability testing were conducted to refine the design.
Round 1 Insights
Participants struggled with the expense-splitting flow and were unsure how repayments worked.
Key improvements included:
adding a split toggle
introducing a “who owes” summary
showing payment status clearly
Round 2 Insights
After the improvements:
participants could complete tasks without confusion
the budget flow felt transparent
joining trips and inviting members became more intuitive
Outcome
TripBoard introduces a collaborative trip planning experience that reduces coordination stress while keeping everyone involved.
By centralizing trip information, simplifying decision-making, and making expenses transparent, the app helps groups focus more on the trip itself rather than the planning process.
Interactive Prototype
This prototype demonstrate how users create trips, manage shared expenses, and make group decisions through a centralized workspace.
Reflection
This project highlighted how social dynamics influence product design.
Planning tools are not only about organization — they must also account for the emotional aspects of group interactions, such as money conversations and decision fatigue.
Designing for these dynamics helped create a product that feels supportive rather than overwhelming.
Future Improvements
With more time, the product could expand through features such as:
calendar integration for scheduling
map-based itinerary planning
built-in payment integrations for expense settlement
