Dmytro Svarytsevych
Travel planning app · Tripomatic · 2015

Seven tiles hid the trip.

Tripomatic opened on separate tools for maps, places and bookings. A first-time visitor needed somewhere to start. I redesigned its navigation around one trip overview, connecting places to discover with the schedule and planning tools.

Product Designer, external consultant·User research, IA, interaction design
Context

A first visit needs
a starting point.

The founders brought me in to review the UI and interactions. The product was already in use. My audit raised a question: how would someone plan a first visit through these separate tools?

User conversations clarified that starting point. The traveller needed ideas for what to see and a sense of how much would fit. I used that need to connect discovery with a plan taking shape.

Handwritten Explore and Plan flow with the starting condition user knows nothing about city and questions about days, money and places.
My notes begin with “user knows nothing about city.” Explore comes before Plan: what to see, how many days to allow and what it might cost.
Overview

The trip became the main view.

I brought the schedule, interests and companions into one scrollable overview. The plan had a home. Hotels and car hire stayed within reach, alongside the trip information they related to.

Original trip screen with seven tool tiles on the left; proposed scrollable trip overview with summary, ring calendar, interests and companions on the right.
Original app on the left, proposed trip overview on the right. I prepared these portfolio renders in 2016 from the 2015 engagement. The numbers in the screens are example trip data.

Judge a place before opening its details.

The original list showed names and descriptions. Practical context took another tap. I moved time, likes, price and distance onto each result row.

The next stop has to fit. Travellers can compare the time, cost and distance before adding it to the trip.

Original places list on the left; proposed list on the right with time, likes, price and distance on each result.
Original list on the left, proposed design on the right. Time, price and distance make the practical tradeoffs visible in the list.
Decisions

Help the traveller see
what fits into the plan.

Show when a day is too full.

Each day became a ring showing how full the plan was. A red segment warned of overload. I wanted travellers to catch an overloaded day before the trip.

Put new ideas beside the schedule.

Selected interests and suggested tags appeared in the trip overview. They connected discovery with planning. Search remained available for travellers who already knew what they wanted.

Original screen and interface iterations annotated by hand with notes on friends, trip statistics, recommended tags and colour coding for the day's intensity.
My notes link the calendar to “color coding on intensivity.” Suggested tags sit beside the traveller’s interests, connecting new ideas with the plan.
Outcome

The team supported the proposal.

"Dmytro has presented us with a UX solution for Tripomatic mobile app that the whole team immediately liked. He has done an extremely good job in researching who our users are ... and suggested a smart and very well thought out navigation scheme that simplifies the overall experience."
Lukas Nevosad · Co-founder, Tripomatic · October 2015

I delivered the navigation proposal and interface designs. My engagement ended at handoff. The founder's feedback confirms the team's response to the work.

The subsequent rollout is unconfirmed. I don't have usage results to report. The before-and-after designs and working notes show the scope of the proposal.

Takeaway

Tripomatic was an early lesson in organising a product around what the user is trying to do. I returned to it in enterprise work. Here, the trip connected the schedule, places and bookings.

Next case Employee satisfaction dashboard