I created a list of assumptions list the team used as a baseline for the project. I managed to confirm 4 out of 7 assumptions:
- Travel planning is stressful, time-consuming and requires having to search on multiple platforms
- Friends and family's recommendations are always the best choice for trip planning
- Users are overloaded with choice
- Users want to have a ready-made itinerary.
From there, I used rapid brainstorming to present a list of possible solutions for the team.

I didn't manage to validate that
- Users want to follow friends and bloggers ready-made itineraries
- Users want to see all details on the map
- Users want to add all details to itinerary

And these are exactly what led to the main concept of the project! After another long and tough brainstorming call, the decision has been made to pursue the map and network concept to differentiate Travel Social from major trip planning competitors.

I initiated a second round of research in a form of survey with primary goal to prioritise features based on user ratings, evaluate the importance of the map vs itineraries, and to help tailor trip creation process.

Biggest question about the maps. I asked what will be more useful - maps or ready-made guides.
Majority voted for guides with a list of places, notes and pictures.
So, if we wanted to keep a timeline with people's travels, I suggested to shift focus from the map (though it is good to include just for the sake of visualisation).

50% of people just collect ideas and places to visit but do not create full itineraries.
The rest plan some stuff but prefer to leave room for flexibility. People value customised, relative to their taste itineraries even if it takes time to build over ease of copying.
This suggests that trip creation needs to include both a list of saved places and copying and customising itinerary.

The decision to highlight the social side of the product has informed my designs. I added a big flashy welcome picture and message along with a carousel of trips nearby to tease the new users with the ready-made trips around user location.

I worked on enhanced timeline posts and added suggested travellers to follow again to highlight the social side. It was important for the team to keep both the map and the pictures so I experimented with the layout of the cards.

When designing the onboarding, it was essential to keep it simple and skippable yet informative to introduce what new users can do on the platform and where he should start. That led to a decision to include pop-ups on the profile page.

I tried to emphasise all exciting things about travelling when designed the Profile page: the map which will be coloured blue as the user creates/posts trips; the number of countries visited, the number of trips takes and what kind of traveller a user is - all to find kindred spirits and fellow travel enthusiasts.

To find inspiration and ease the planning part, I worked on the ready-made itineraries that users share with each other. I included pictured (for visual support), comments section to ask questions (thinking back about "talk to a local" need), the map to show visited places and the route, and traveller's tips and comments about each place.

What would differentiate Travel Social the most is the feature to copy a trip shared by your friend or a favourite blogger. However, I knew from the research that users would rarely copy the whole trip and mostly would like to save separate places vs the whole trip. They also would need to be able to customise the trip hence I worked on 2 different flows: save the whole trip but customise it by deleting/added places/notes/own pictures, etc or create a new trip using a list of saved places (which is fast and easy rather than writing down an itinerary from scratch).