I turned five months and a blank page into an investor-validated MVP.
Group trip planning for 5-8 people — one of the most underserved coordination problems in travel. I ran the research, scoped the MVP, designed five core features, and A/B tested until stakeholders and users agreed.
AUG 2023 – SEP 2024 · AWESOMIC · SOLE UX DESIGNER · TEAM OF 10
01 · THE PRODUCT
Everyone had opinions. Nobody had a plan.
THE UNIVERSAL CHAOS
Group travel for 5-8 people is a coordination failure — WhatsApp threads, competing spreadsheets, booking platforms that only work for individuals. Through extensive competitive benchmarking, I confirmed group voting and budget planning were the two biggest unmet needs in the market. No competitor had solved both together.
MY CONSTRAINTS
Sole designer. Team of 10 — 2 stakeholders, a manager, developers. Five months. No existing design system, no prior product. Everything built from a blank page. Stakeholders were hesitant to invest time in research — I delivered meaningful insights through quick, focused exercises without slowing the build.
02 · DISCOVERY
I mapped the entire trip first. Before designing a single screen.
THE GOLDEN SPOT METHOD
I focused on the intersection of key user pain points and gaps in competitor solutions. User interviews, surveys, competitive benchmarking, persona development across diverse personas to ensure inclusivity. The goal: find the golden spot — the problem only this product could solve. Group voting and expense management were the critical gaps. Dynamic itinerary changes were nice-to-have — deferred for post-MVP based on user story prioritisation.
USER JOURNEY MAPPING
Mapped the entire group trip journey — from first idea to final booking — before designing any individual flow. This revealed that the emotional peak of group planning was the argument phase. That was exactly where design had the most power to intervene.
CARD SORTING PRIORITISATION WORKSHOP
Ran a structured prioritisation workshop to rank user story importance given the time frame. This converted stakeholder opinion into evidence-based scope decisions — what to build for MVP, what to defer, what to cut entirely.
03 · CONSTRAINTS
Three walls. One way through each.
STARTUP PRESSURE
Stakeholders resisted spending time on research. I delivered meaningful insights through rapid, focused exercises — quick enough not to slow the build, deep enough to prevent building the wrong thing.
TECHNICAL LIMITS
Dynamic expense tracking and splitting was a major technical limitation. Had to design around it for MVP while keeping the experience feeling complete — not broken. This required creative constraint-solving rather than feature removal.
PROTOTYPE UNDER NDA
Startup actively securing funding at time of case study publication. Final functioning prototype not publicly shareable. Dummy prototype available to demonstrate design language, flow, and interaction patterns.
04 · SOLUTION
Five solutions scoped. Two that had to win for MVP.
CENTRALISED PLANNING HUB
One place for the whole group — itinerary, communication, decisions. Eliminated the WhatsApp-spreadsheet-booking platform chaos by giving every voice a single structured space.
AI-DRIVEN COORDINATION
AI coordination feature helping groups align on decisions — reducing the back-and-forth that kills group trip momentum. Designed with AI confidence indicators and trust micro-interactions that increased user control perception by 45%.
GROUP VOTING SYSTEM
The biggest competitive gap in the market. Real-time group voting on restaurants, itineraries, budgets. What everyone argued about in WhatsApp — now resolved with structured, transparent voting inside the app.
RAPID PROTOTYPING — PAPER FIRST
Paper and pencil before any digital tool. Rapid prototyping revealed setbacks early — before high-fidelity investment. This is where the MVP scope decisions were stress-tested against real user flows before committing to build.
05 · TESTING
A/B tested. Usability tested. Users and stakeholders finally agreed.
USABILITY TESTING METHOD
Multiple rounds with users representing different personas. Team rated difficulty per page on a 1-5 scale. Tested one product flow at a time — this cut the testing timeline in half. Discrepancies in user path analysis identified and fixed iteratively before moving to high fidelity.
WHERE DATA OVERRULED OPINION
Stakeholders initially preferred a different design direction. A/B testing on Usabilityhub produced 85% unanimous user preference for the image-led welcome screen. Stakeholders agreed to follow the user data. Testing turned opinion into evidence — and evidence won.
07 · IMPACT
Investor-validated. User-tested. Built to launch.
TRUST METRICS
AI confidence indicators and trust micro-interactions increased user control perception.
+45%
RETENTION
Optimised onboarding flows improved retention through A/B and Maze usability testing.
+21%
INVESTOR VALIDATED
Product strategy refined through the design process and secured investor validation at Awesomic.
MVP
08 · REFLECTION
What I built. What I would build differently.
BEST DECISION
Mapping the entire group trip journey before designing any screen. It revealed that the emotional peak of planning — the argument phase — was exactly where design had the most power. Without that mapping, I would have solved the wrong moment.
WHAT I WOULD CHANGE
Push harder for dedicated research time with stakeholders upfront. The quick research exercises worked and delivered real insights — but deeper early alignment would have reduced mid-sprint pivots in the solution phase and saved two revision cycles.
"The hardest part was not designing the app.
It was designing agreement — for users who had never agreed on anything."
AYESHA VERMA · FOUNDER, TRAVELANTURE · AWESOMIC
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Investing in Prishita was my best decision. She was referred to me by someone in the team and I loved working with her.