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Project
Hopscotch
Personalised group travel planner powered by real-time context and local insights
88% of travellers struggle because trip planning tools fail them. We designed a companion that bridges the gap between travel expectations and real experiences.
Team Size
Team of 4
My Role
Product Designer
Project Domain
Tourism Tech
Duration
1.5 Month, 2026
IMPACT
Enabling authentic travel discovery
By introducing verified local insights within the forum, the platform aims to reduce reliance on popularity/commercialised algorithms and highlight culturally authentic experiences.
Enabling smarter collaborative group planning
Hopscotch reframes group planning as a shared decision making process, Built-in collaboration tools such as shared chat spaces, preference inputs, and AI generated dynamic voting systems simplify coordination.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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The Challenge
Why it matters
Our Approach
Outcome
Travellers often face fatigue and frustration even before the trip starts. This reduces their excitement for the trip
High delta between expectations and experiences
1
Going through multiple sources for trusted info
2
Not personalised to their planning style
3
Generic commercialised recommendations
4
Decision fatigue of planning in groups
CONTEXT SETTING
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For many travellers, the stress begins long before the journey starts,
during the planning phase itself.
Our preliminary secondary research revealed that the travel planning phase is often marked by:
Fragmented information sources that are hard to trust
Heavily time consuming and overwhelming
Difficulty in coordinating with group members to incorporate everyone's expectations
As a result, planning becomes a cognitive burden rather than an enjoyable part of the experience.
Snippets from secondary research
PRIMARY RESEARCH APPROACH
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Understanding Travel Planning Behaviour
How do people plan their trips? What platforms do they rely
on? When does it become overwhelming?
Identifying Friction in Planning Process
At what stage does information overload happen? What are
coordination challenges? How does trust build and break?
Understanding Decision Making Complexity
How are decisions such as destination selection, accommodation,
budget, transportation, activities etc. planned out?
Evaluating existing travel platforms
Analysing how current tools handle discovery, planning,
and coordination.
KEY RESEARCH INSIGHTS
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Please note that many of images attached below are direct screenshots from the actual presentation, and there in a different style.
Key insights from primary research
USER PERSONAS & JOURNEY MAP
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Based on our research, we categorised our users into 3 major segments, and studied their journey:
User Personas & journey map
PROBLEM FRAMING
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There is no single intelligent platform that unifies planning, personalisation, mapping, budgeting, and group collaboration
in one seamless travel experience.
HOW MIGHT WE STATEMENTS
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1
Streamline group decision-making by reducing complexity, aligning preferences faster, and enabling clearer, more decisive choices without prolonged negotiation.
2
Reduce planning fatigue by restoring trust and relevance in information by enabling access to content that is clearly authentic, context-aware, and personalised, without extensive manual validation across multiple sources.
3
Provide an opportunity to surface timely, contextual, and location-specific information during the trip, helping travellers discover experiences they would otherwise miss and reducing post-trip regret.
PRODUCT BUILDING
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Hopscotch is an AI based Personalised group/solo travel planner that will adapt to your natural planning order based on contextual real time information
Instead of forcing users to navigate complex interfaces, the platform understands the travel intent and user's expectations through conversations, and adapts to their style. The value pillars are:
Reliable
Safety first UX
Legitimate trustable information
Supportive to their planning style
Social
Building local connections
Easy collaboration & decision making
Simple
Easy to learn
Minimum cognitive load
Conversational
Market and Business alignment
CONCEPT EXPLORATION
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Structured itinerary interface
with AI optimisation
Iteration 1. Failed in usability testing
Multiple rounds of usability testing revealed the structured flow
could not adapt to the multitude of planning styles of users. It
was defeating the purpose of the app. Moreover we were not
leveraging highly on our MOAT of AI planning companion.
Users had to go through heavy motor load before reaching
basic output.
Conversation planning interface
that builds itinerary in real time
Iteration 2. Passed in usability testing
Multiple rounds of usability testing revealed the structured flow
could not adapt to the multitude of planning styles of users. It
was defeating the purpose of the app. More over we were not
leveraging highly on our MOAT of AI planning companion.
Users had to go through heavy motor load before reaching
basic output
Low fidelity conceptualisation
DESIGN SYSTEM
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Attached below is the interactive Figma file the design system of Hopscotch. The support scalability, the product was built using a modular 8 point grid system. The design system starts at the sub-atomic level of typography hierarchy, colours ranging to full organisms. This enables consistency across design. Opening the embed might slow down the webpage.
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HAPPY PATH USER FLOW
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Instead of presenting every screen individually, I’ve included a short walkthrough recording that demonstrates the core interaction flow of the product. Since Hopscotch is built around a dynamic AI driven experience and interface, many of its behaviours, such as real-time itinerary updates and collaborative chat interactions are best understood through motion rather than static screens.
To view screenshots of all the screens, please click here to open it's static Figma file.
The video has been sped up by 2x to reduce the time of video. Sorry for the speed rush.
Happy path user flow
ADDITIONAL FEATURES
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Beyond the core planner, Hopscotch introduces two additional features designed to improve travel authenticity via connecting with locals, and maintain memories of trips through trip journals:
Local Insights Forum
A moderated discussion space where travellers can interact
with verified locals. Locals are tagged basis on location and
experience of staying there. This helps travelers access
authentic local recommendations and hidden spots beyond
algorithmic suggestions.
Travel Journal
A personal travel journal where you can store memories from
your trips. Users can collect unique location stamps, photos,
notes, locations etc. Over time, this creates a digital memory
of your past trips
REFLECTIONS
Designing for real world behaviour
One of the biggest insights from the research was that travel planning rarely happens in a structured or linear way. People jump between ideas, discuss options with friends, and make decisions gradually. This project reinforced the importance of designing systems that support this natural behaviour rather than forcing rigid planning workflows, which ultimately led us toward a conversation driven interface for planning trips collaboratively.
Designing for personalisation
Travel planning is deeply personal. No two trips follow the same structure or are alike. During the project, I realised that traditional planning tools rely heavily on static filters and predefined workflows, which often fail to capture the nuanced preferences travellers bring to planning.
Designing Hopscotch pushed me to think about personalisation not just as recommendation logic, but as an adaptive system that responds to evolving context, preferences, and conversations. This allowed me to bring the power of AI into dynamic user experience creation.
Good tools don't just organise trips and dictate plans, they adapt to the way people naturally plan trips together.
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