AI Trip Planner is a travel tool that, with the help of AI, creates personalized itineraries based on users’ preferences, including budget, destination, timing, and companions. It offers tailored suggestions for places to visit, stay, and eat, while providing real-time traffic updates via Google Maps. Users can easily adjust their plans, download them offline, and engage with a community to share their experiences. This sharing builds trust and inspires others, turning everyday users into contributors who shape the platform’s future.

Project Overview

Challenges

• Many users prefer to rely on other people’s recommendations over AI-generated plans, so we needed to gain their trust.

• Planning trips can be time-consuming, and users may become overwhelmed with excessive information. We must design the platform to help them overcome this challenge using AI.

• Choosing the best commuting method can often be confusing, making efficient planning more difficult.

• In our survey results, we found that users struggle to keep track of their expenses while traveling.

Process

We ran a double Diamond method based on the Design Thinking Methodology. It was not a linear path; we bounced between stages as the project progressed.

Discover

To understand users and problems, the following steps have been taken.

• Surveys

• Interviews

• Competitive Analysis

Survey

We ran a survey to learn more about our users, their needs, and their challenges. We included people of different ages and backgrounds.

Interview & Afinity Diagram

After the survey, we interviewed 7 participants to gain deeper insights into their pain points, focusing on improving travel scheduling through a powerful AI search engine.

Outcome:

• Travelers want to choose the best way of transportation to save their time.

• Choosing the right location saves time and makes trips more enjoyable by staying near attractions, dining, and transport.

• Offline access keeps you prepared without an internet connection, lowering travel stress.

• Reviews help travelers plan better by offering valuable insights for informed choices.

Competitive Analysis

That’s a thorough approach to competitive analysis! By examining platforms like Tripadvisor and Wanderlog, you can gain insights into how they utilize AI for trip suggestions, which can inform your own recommendation algorithms. Analyzing Google Maps and Google Trips for route and commute optimization is also key, as it helps you understand how to streamline travel planning.

Define

At the define stage, we identified our main challenges and explored solutions. We created persona, a site map, and user flow based on the data collected during the discovery stage.

Persona

The insights we gained from surveys and interviews helped shape the persona. Sophia's main goal is to find a trustworthy, personalized travel plan for a short-term local travel experience to save time.

Site map

We first made the information structure using card sorting. After user testing and looking at competitors, we updated it several times.

User Flow

In the user flow, we aim to show how the user selects a hotel and adds it to their plan to create a personalized itinerary powered by AI.

Develop

After analyzing our research data and understanding user needs, we created clear solutions to address their concerns and included them in our design. Below are some of our solutions