“I’d love to go on a group trip this year, but my family’s schedule never aligns.”
My goal was to better understand the challenges users face when organizing group vacations. I focused on a broad age range of 18–50, recognizing that group travel planning spans many life stages; rom college students coordinating spring break trips to families planning holiday vacations. To gather insights, I used a questionnaire to collect qualitative data from participants.
Prior to conducting research, I assumed that financial planning would be the most frustrating aspect of organizing group travel. While money did emerge as a challenge, the findings revealed that time was the most significant pain point. Participants frequently mentioned difficulties requesting time off from work or school and aligning schedules with friends and family. This shifted my perspective and helped me recognize that effective time coordination is just as important as budgeting when designing tools to support group trip planning and savings.
The Problem
The Solution
Trip planning as a group can be very difficult with having to take into account everyone's schedules and finances often times trip plans end up going down the drain. It's hard to keep information organized, and it's hard to keep track of who will have their money saved when it's time to book the trip.
A trip planning app that A trip planning app that works both as an organizer and as a way to save money, it prioritizes group trips by allowing you to collaborate on planning trips and saving towards a collective goal.
Research Summary
I learned a lot about the UX/UI design process, especially how important research and usability testing are in creating effective designs. Through my research, I also gained a better understanding of what people value most when planning travel.
I would like to continue improving my user interface to make it even more user-friendly. I also want to expand accessibility features so the app can better serve a broader range of users.
Finding an affordable location, and booking everything is especially difficult. It's also hard to keep everyone updated and organized during trip planning.
Finding time to plan and go on vacation was difficult. Especially in a large group where there are so many different schedules.
Saving and organizing savings in a group can be frustrating and confusing. It’s hard to keep track of expenses and the contributions everyone should make.
Time
Finances
Planning
User Pain Points
User Personas
User Journey
Low-Fidelity Prototypes
Branding
Usability Testing
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Crew’d
Crew’d
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Trouble aligning their work, and school schedules.
Keeping vacation planning organized is hard.
An app that can help her organize trip information to share with family.
A way to easily put away money for trips.
Efficiently organize large family trips for holidays.
Align schedules and finances for family.
Jana Henderson
Jana is a 45 service manager who loves spending time with her family including extended members. For the holidays she and her family always meet at a family members house, but this year they’d like to go on vacation for the holidays. Jana would like to find an easy way to organize her plans and share it with the family.
Goals
Frustrations
Needs
Age: 45
Education: Masters Degree
Hometown: Miami, FL
Family: Husband, 2 Adult Children
Occupation: Service Manager
Bio
Hard to keep track of friends savings.
Difficult to organize a trip with her college schedule.
Alyssa Diaz
Goals
Frustrations
Needs
Age: 20
Education: Bachelors Degree
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Family: 3 roommates
Occupation: Student
Bio
Quickly organize trips with her friends.
Keep track of savings for the trip.
An easy way to track group expenses and savings.
An efficient way to organize trip information.
Alyssa is a college student who wants to be able to go on trips with her friends. However, Alyssa and her friends often time have trouble saving for trips and keeping track of who has their money ready for trip expenses. Alyssa would like to find a way to keep track of her and her friends savings, so trip planning goes smoother.
“Someone always comes short, on their portion of the payment.”
I conducted usability testing during the low-fidelity prototype stage to focus on validating the app’s user flow. Given the number of pages and features, ensuring a clear and intuitive flow was a priority. Testing at this stage allowed me to identify navigation and flow issues early, making the design process more time-efficient before moving into high-fidelity designs.
80% of participants had difficulty locating the personal savings page, suggesting that personal and group savings pathways lack clear visibility and distinction.
Findings
40% of participants identified the interface as buggy, indicating friction points within the core user flow.
80% of participants struggled with overall navigation, revealing usability issues in the app’s information architecture.
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Create trip option located at top of home page for easy planning.
Explore popular locations and attractions for vacation ideas
Add and update trip info on trip page.
Add to a personal savings account on your profile page.
Create group chats for your trips to share important details!
Deposit money into savings account.
Set a group savings goal, see other members contributions, and contribute to group savings.
For my brand colors, I originally chose yellow as the main color with blue as an accent. However, I quickly realized that yellow on a white background would be hard to see and not very user-friendly or accessible. After noticing that, I switched to blue as the primary brand color and used yellow as the accent instead.
Blue is generally seen as calming and trustworthy, which felt very fitting since this app focuses on traveling and finance. The yellow accent pairs nicely with the blue and adds energy and life to the overall design without overwhelming it.
Blue and yellow are generally considered to be more color-blind accessible, which was important to me. However, it was still a challenge because yellow on certain backgrounds, like red, can be difficult for some users to see clearly.
The best solution was to use blue and yellow strategically. Especially for specific buttons and key elements. This way, users with color blindness can better differentiate between the background and important information, while still keeping everything clear and easy to read for all other users.
Accessibility Concerns
High Fidelity Mockups
High-Fidelity Prototypes
Going Forward
Let's Connect!
What I learned
Next Steps
Competitive Analysis
Think
Action
Research
Onboarding
Use
Task List
Feelings
Pain Points
Contemplate holiday vacation destinations. Think about if theres an app that can help her plan and save for a group vacation
Trips never happen because of difficulty with finances and planning.
It was hard to find an app that allows me to both save and plan for a trip.
I wish I could check out the app first before officially signing up.
App may be too complex for older family members.
Go to app store. Search trip planning apps. Read reviews and read about Crew’d features download Crew’d.
Create an account, create a trip. Log necessary trip information. Explore popular locations.
Share trips with Crew. Set a group & personal savings goals. Update trip information. Discuss important updates using chat and reminder features.
Crew’d
Timeline
Role
Skills
UX Designer
UX Researcher
8 Weeks
Mobile App Design
Digital Design
User Research
Project Overview
Crew’d is a collaborative trip planning and savings app designed to simplify the group travel experience. The app allows users to create shared savings goals with their travel crew, track individual contributions, and stay accountable as a group.
Beyond budgeting, Crew’d centralizes key trip details in one place—organizing itineraries, deadlines, payment due dates, reservations, and to-do lists—so nothing gets overlooked. By combining financial planning with trip coordination, Crew’d reduces the stress of group travel and helps users stay aligned, organized, and on track from the early planning stages to departure.
Wanderlog
TripIt
Trip Advisor
Roadtrippers
Hotel search includes air bnb. Allows you to plan in organize everything in app.
Easily keep track of all of your trip details by forwarding confirmation emails and keeping them in app.
Allows users to look at reviews for hotels, restauraunts, attracxtions ect. As well as book, plan and review their own trips.
Allows you to plan roadtrips by allowing you to find places to stay, resturaunts and attractions as you drive.
air bnb integration, book trips in app, split expenses with friends compatible with screen reader, website design & text is clear and legible
navigation menu text is a bit too small
Lots of things on front page, can be distracting.
doesnt allow fot saving or have a chat feature
pretty simple and easy to navigate
easy to find menu
book through app, leave and read reviews
menu is clear and concise, easy to navigate.
quicklaunch to help start planning, good user heiarcy. menu is clear and concise, easy to navigate. Their tone is very fun and inviting, makes users excited to use the app.
only highlighted text can be read. with screenreader. not too many features to explore
same design/info on all pages make it hard to different between pages.
Many features are locked behind a paywall.
can be hard to find planned trips.
Value Proposition
Strengths
Weaknesses
Value Proposition
Strengths
Weaknesses
Value Proposition
Value Proposition
Strengths
Weaknesses
Weaknesses
Strengths