Clara
Group travel often begins with enthusiasm but quickly becomes chaotic. People bounce between group chats, spreadsheets, booking sites, and screenshots. Ideas get buried, decisions are unclear, and one person, usually the organized friend ends up carrying the entire mental load.
This case study explores Clara, a mobile app designed to make group trip planning feel collaborative, organized, and enjoyable.
Problem
Through surveys and interviews (ages 25–38, all recent group travelers), three issues came up repeatedly:
- People rely on too many disconnected tools: chats, spreadsheets, Maps, Pinterest, Splitwise, email.
- One person almost always becomes the planner, leading to uneven effort and burnout.
- Planning feels exciting at first, but quickly shifts into decision fatigue and confusion.
Existing tools solve individual tasks, but not the experience of planning together. This gap became the core design opportunity.
Research Approach
I combined a short Google Forms survey with follow-up interviews and synthesized the findings through affinity mapping.
I focused on understanding:
- How groups make decisions
- How they organize details
- Where communication breaks down
- Emotional highs and lows of planning
- What an ideal collaboration tool would look like
This helped build a clear picture of the end-to-end planning journey.
Key Insights
Three patterns directly shaped Clara’s direction:
- Too Many Tools, Not Enough Clarity: People switch between multiple apps that don’t connect, making it easy to lose decisions and momentum.
- One Person Does Most of the Work: Groups want shared planning, but behaviour rarely matches the intention.
- People Want Planning to Feel Fun and Social: Despite the stress, planning together still brings excitement, inspiration, and connection.
These insights grounded every design decision.
Persona: Maya, The Social Organizer
Maya loves discovering new places and curating experiences. She naturally steps into the planner role, but ends up juggling scattered links, mixed opinions, and group indecision.
Goals:
- Make decisions together
- Keep details organized
- Share responsibilities fairly
Pain Points:
- Information everywhere
- Repeating the same questions
- Feeling like the only one driving the trip
Maya became the anchor for Clara’s first version.
Experience Map
Mapping Maya’s actions, thoughts, and emotions across the planning journey highlighted a clear curve:
- Excitement during early idea-sharing
- Overwhelm once logistics pile up
- Responsibility overload, especially around decisions and follow-ups
- Relief once everything is booked
- Joy on the trip itself
The opportunity: Keep planning as enjoyable and collaborative as the trip itself.
Design Challenge
How might we help travel groups share planning responsibilities so that organizing a trip feels fair, collaborative, and stress-free for everyone?
This question guided the product structure.
Ideation
My goal in ideation was to transform emotional pain points into clear, functional concepts. I explored five opportunity areas:
Shared Responsibilities
- Assign tasks to any group member
- Break big tasks into micro-tasks
- Visualize contributions and workload
Decision-Making Tools
- Polls and votes in one place
- Clear summaries of finalized decisions
Budget Transparency
- Shared budget with expense tagging
Centralized Planning Hub
- One trip space with tasks, decisions, and budget
- Calendar and timeline views
- Smart summaries of group updates
Emotional Engagement
- Milestone celebrations
- Trip countdown
- Post-trip memory capsule
The outcome was a focused value proposition: Clara brings clarity by centralizing tasks, decisions, and budgets.
User Stories & Epics
I translated ideas into user stories and grouped them into four epics to structure the MVP:
Epic 1: Shared Planning & Decisions
Seeing all ideas in one place, voting, assigning tasks, and visualizing progress.
Epic 2: Communication & Collaboration
Tagging people, thread summaries, message recaps, lightweight nudges.
Epic 3: Budgeting & Transparency
Shared budgets, transparent expenses, smooth reimbursements.
Epic 4: Emotional Engagement
Celebrate milestones, track planning progress, reflect afterward.
This gave the product a solid foundation and scope.
Task Flow
I focused on a core scenario: Maya assigning tasks within her group. The flow ensures:
- Clear task owners
- Simple creation and tracking
- Equal contribution visibility
- A shared trip dashboard for accountability
This task flow became the basis for wireframing.
Lo-Fi iOS Wireframes
I sketched concepts and translated them into grayscale iOS wireframes to focus on structure. Key screens explored:
Goals:
- A clean trip dashboard
- A shared task board with categories
- Share responsibilities fairly
Pain Points:
- Information everywhere
- Repeating the same questions
- Decision polls with clear results
- DSimple affordances to show who is doing what
The grayscale helped keep attention on hierarchy and flow before moving into UI decisions.
Next Steps
With research, insights, structure, and flows in place, the next steps are:
- Mid-fidelity iOS UI
- Brand direction for Clara
© 2025 Jennifer Yaya Falanga.