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.

Team & Timeline:
My role: UX Designer/ PM (end-to-end ownership)

Team size: 1 - solo/independent

Timeline: 3 week sprint

My Role & Responsibilities:

  • Led user research & testing

  • Conducted competitor/ market research

  • Designed 0–1 product including interaction design & prototypes (all fidelities)

Impact

  • ~4–5+ hours of planning time saved vs. manual trip plan research

  • 100% of participants would invite at least one collaborator to co-plan

  • 100% would use an AI-generated trip itinerary as a starting point vs. manual planning

  • 0% knew a similar competitor

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 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

Understanding What Travelers Need
From a Planning App

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.

Exploring Ideas for a More Streamlined Planning Experience

I created a storyboard featuring Leslie as the protagonist and renamed the app to Conci, reflecting positive user feedback;

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.

Designing Nomio:
Collaborative Itinerary Planning Made Easy

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.

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

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

Validating Nomio’s Flows and
Features With Users

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.

Replacing budget sliders with multiple choice options reduced decision fatigue and made it easier for users to express budget preferences quickly.

Above is a video walkthrough of the Nomio app prototype.

So What? Results & Outcomes

Overall, user research feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

  • Participants estimated the app could save 4-5 hours of planning time per trip compared to manual research.

  • 100% of participants said they would invite at least one collaborator to co-plan trips, highlighting strong social value.

  • 0% of participants could name a competitor that combined planning + sharing, underscoring a market gap.

  • Potential impact metrics: If launched, success could be measured through metrics such as: time to complete a trip plan, % of users completing a plan, adoption/retention, and overall usability (e.g., SUS score, user satisfaction).

Lessons Learned

Through this project, we learned that...

  • 1) Balancing information density with clarity is challenging, but worth it so screens can deliver enough detail without overwhelming users

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

  • 3) Keeping the process user-centered grounds the design in real user needs, ensuring relevance and reliability

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