For context, Japan has been a lifelong passion of mine. It started when I was a child and saw an episode of Dragon Ball Z for the first time. From there, I discovered manga—Japanese graphic novels that serve as the source material for anime. I developed a love for sushi, ramen, and Japanese fashion. As a hobby, I have been teaching myself Japanese for a couple of years. I have also had the privilege of visiting Japan twice with my older brother, Dylan.
So, when she asked for recommendations, my mind exploded with a million different places she should visit. I was desperate for her to have an equally amazing experience as I had and to experience all that Japan has to offer. However, this excitement was also accompanied by a sense of nervousness. I didn't want to forget anything or leave something out. So, I started a large page in my Notes app and frantically jotted down everything that popped into my head. But then I caught myself thinking:
While my love of Japan and desire to recommend locations to my friend was a great jumping-off point, I needed to dig deeper and find a larger problem to solve.
So, I started with a holistic view of how people travel. I conducted interviews, asking people about their habits while on vacation. It became abundantly clear that not everyone travels the same way. I believe that travel habits exist on a wide spectrum. Through analyzing my interviews, I discovered an untapped market of travelers.
The new traveler archetype I discovered is a group of people that I refer to as The Ambitious Dillydallier.
They are the in-betweeners of the travel spectrum. They are people who want to maximize their trip, but also love to wander, explore, and find new things spontaneously.
They want to get as much done as travelers with full itineraries, but don’t want to feel rushed while doing so.
They want to do anything and everything, but tight, strict schedules stress them out. They want to take their time, soak in experiences, and enjoy every second of their trip.
Have a full day planned, but end up spending too much time shopping for the perfect pair of jeans? Cool!
Blowing off a dinner reservation because you passed a restaurant that smelled good? That’s perfectly fine with the Dillydallier!
They travel to do and see everything they can, but are not going to stress or apologize for dilly-dallying along the way.
When starting out, I had so many ideas that I figured the best way to organize my scrambled thoughts was to create a massive FigJam board and throw everything on it. This app idea completely took over my mind—I would rush out of bed in the middle of the night to jot down an idea before I forgot it. This was also around the time I started looking for color palettes, screen inspiration, icons, typography, and more.
Of the 12 features listed, the features that scored the highest were:
A feature that allows users to plug in locations—sightseeing, restaurants, shopping, etc.—and have the app create an optimized route.
A social feature where you can follow friends and influencers and see what they did on their trip, what they recommend, and what they recommend skipping.
A "mistakes" feature where you can read about where people wasted time or money so you don't make the same mistake.
A feature that alerts you to cultural cues for locations you are visiting so you don't end up looking like a rude tourist.
I usually prefer starting with sketches rather than wireframes. This is because sketching allows me to rapidly ideate, but I have to take my time and think deeply while I draw, as it does take time. Rather than just slapping some frames and shapes on a screen, I like to take my time drawing everything out. I usually find problems and solutions much faster while I am drawing because aesthetic problems or bad UX stick out much more.
Instead of starting off with low-fidelity wireframes, I went ahead and jumped right into medium-fidelity ones. This is because I was creating the design system from scratch by myself. To save time, I decided that using the design system while creating the wireframes would help me accomplish two goals at once. I could get a good feel for the user flow and any issues along the way, while also testing out my design system and seeing what tweaks and changes I needed to make along the way. This was really helpful and saved me a lot of time. That's a personal design philosophy of mine: if you do most of the heavy lifting at the start, actually designing the app is the easy part.
Wireframes
Sketches
