Group itinerary building
Every approved activity drops into a shared, visual itinerary. The plan assembles itself from group decisions, so no single person owns the spreadsheet.
ux case study · general assembly uxdi · 2022
Loql: group travel that feels local
Group trips die in the group chat. We designed a mobile app where the planning itself is the fun part: shared itineraries, gamified voting, and local discovery.
- Role
- Lead designer (team of 3)
- Focus
- UX research · product strategy · branding · mobile design
- Tools
- Figma · surveys · moderated usability tests
- Outcome
- High fidelity prototype, tested with users
01 · the brief
Planning a trip with friends means one exhausted organizer and a hundred unread messages. Why does something fun feel like work?
Loql is a concept for travelers who want authentic, local experiences without the coordination pain. The bet: if a group can see options, vote on them, and watch an itinerary assemble itself, planning stops being a chore one person absorbs and becomes something the group actually does together.
As lead designer I owned the research plan, the feature strategy, and the mobile design language, working alongside two teammates through a full double diamond.
02 · research
We started wide: a UX audit of existing travel tools, a competitive analysis of their group features, a screener survey, and moderated interviews with people who had recently planned group trips.
82screener survey responses
5in-depth user interviews
4competitors audited for group flows
What people told us
- They already use travel apps to find activities, but alone
- They want shared input, not a single organizer carrying the trip
- Plans need to flex: budgets, energy levels, and weather all shift
- Most travel is social: fun trips, or visiting friends and family
What that meant
- Discovery is solved; group decision making is not
- The product is the consensus, not the catalog
- Voting must be light, fast, and a little bit fun
- The itinerary should build itself from group choices
03 · synthesis
We condensed the research into Jessica: 30, a biologist in New York, planning an escape with friends. She stays in rentals to feel local, hunts for activities across half a dozen apps, and ends up the default organizer because nobody else opens the spreadsheet.
Jessica needs
- Activities everyone will actually enjoy
- To stay inside a shared budget
- To feel like a local, not a tourist
Jessica is blocked by
- Guessing what the group wants without prior knowledge
- Coordinating around uncertainty and everyone's schedules
- Carrying the plan alone while others just show up
How might we make group planning feel shared, flexible, and fun instead of one person's unpaid job?
04 · design decisions
Three features carried the concept, each mapped directly to a research finding.
Gamified voting
Activities become cards the group swipes and votes on. Consensus is visible in real time, which turns the most painful part of planning into the most social one.
Interactive onboarding
A short setup captures each traveler's budget, pace, and interests, so recommendations and votes start from what the whole group actually wants.
Want to feel the voting concept? Try the interactive demo built for this site.
05 · style guide
Warm sunset tones bring the energy; ocean blues keep it calm and trustworthy. Rounded, minimal icons and generous tap targets keep the UI out of the way. This palette and type system are rendered live in code below, not screenshotted.
displayBitter, for headlines with warmth
subheadingGeorama carries structure between sections
bodyNunito keeps reading friendly and fast on mobile
buttonsRoboto for compact, tappable labels
06 · prototype & testing
We built the full flow in Figma at high fidelity and put it in front of users in moderated sessions: find an activity, vote with the group, watch the itinerary update.
92%task success on location based search
4.7/5average likelihood to recommend
40%less time to plan a group trip in test scenarios
07 · reflection
Loql taught me that the hardest interface in a social product is the group itself. The design work that mattered was not the screens; it was deciding what the group sees together, what stays individual, and how consensus becomes visible without pressure.
It is also where I learned to argue from evidence. Every feature on this page traces to a finding, and the ones that did not trace got cut.