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Product Introduction

Challenge

Final Designs

Who We Designed For

Research Process

Branding

Reflection

0 - 1 Product Design

LAUNCHED 2026

ToGather

Travel Together, Gather Memories

A travel planning app that gets group trips out of the chaos of the group chat: turning scattered ideas, hidden opinions, and one exhausted planner into a shared plan everyone actually show up for.

MY ROLE

Product Designer

TIMELINE

September - May 2025

ORGANIZATION

Design for America - UW

CHALLENGE

Have you ever heard "the trip made it out of group chat"?

Have you ever heard "the trip made it out of group chat"?

Everyone knows the scene: a group of friends starts planning a trip. Initially, everyone reacts with excitement, and then nothing happens. Flights, hotels, the itinerary, what to eat, or how to get around. The enthusiasm is real, but not everyone has the same travel styles or wants to take the initiative. So it lands on one person's shoulders and slowly stalls out.

Group travel planning is disorganized and stressful, making it hard for friends to turn ideas into real trips.

FINAL DESIGNS

Help the trip make it out of the group chat

5 features, each mapped directly to a stage in the broken system. Collaboration shapes the success of the app.

Feature 1

Plan Together

No more ideas lost in the group chat, no more hidden opinions.


A shared idea board where the whole group adds destinations, activities, and links. Collaboration is encouraged throughout the app.

Feature 2

Make Decision Together

Swipe, vote, decide.


A lightweight, low-friction way for everyone to weigh in on the ideas on the board. This feature directly targets the structured way to share opinions, turning quiet preferences into visible, countable signal.

Feature 3

Make a Shared Itinerary

From scattered ideas to a cohesive, structured day-by-day itinerary.


Once the context exists, the day-by-day plan emerges from the group's decisions rather than one person's best guess.

Feature 4

Can't Agree? Let's Split

But let’s be real! Even with the best itinerary, what happens when you just can’t agree?

ToGather lets sub-groups split off for part of a day instead of forcing a single compromise.

Feature 5

Look Back at Your Trip

Miles, smiles, and memories.


And finally…


ToGather created a shareable trip recap that turns your travel experience into fun, personalized stats.


Everything comes together in a shareable recap card, personalized to your trip, ready to post or send to your group chat.

WHO WE DESIGNED FOR

Gen Z Travelers

Gen Z is a generation that plans trips collaboratively, emphasizes experiences, and is opinionated about how they want to spend their time. Thus, it turns group planning into a genuine coordination problem rather than a logistical one. When everyone has strong opinions and different travel styles, the absence of a structured way to gather those opinions is exactly what breaks the trip.

86% of travelers experience frustration when planning a trip (Amadeus & Microsoft, 2023)

75% of people we surveyed used scattered, disconnected tools to plan (Google Docs, Google Maps, Expedia, TikTok, Message, etc.) (ToGather Survey, 2026)

— The frustration is widespread and well-documented. There's no specific tool to address the collaborative problem in planning —

HOW WE GOT HERE: RESEARCH METHODS

The survey gave me a broad view and identified the problem; the interview gave me nuance, and the testing sessions gave me users' feedback on our product.

50+ survey responses

28 interviews with travelers (18 - 35)

200+ distinct insights from all the interviews

6 usability testing sessions

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

We audited the tools people are already using to determine the gap.

Strong on itinerary structure, but no collaboration tools.

Strong on itinerary structure, but no collaboration tools.

There are different apps for each task ( searching, navigation, booking, costs), and none owns a collaborative feature.

KEY FINDINGS

There is a structural failure in how groups make decisions together.

78% of travelers couldn't get everyone's ideas into one place


"Making sure everyone's preferences are coordinated, accommodating the needs and wants of people…" - interviewee

96% had no structured way to share opinions.


"… Lack of accountability with who does certain tasks" - interviewee

BRANDING

The brand has to feel like Gen Z friends: energetic, warm, and playful, but still organized around human connections and community.

ToGather branding

ToGather team won the Best User Experience at DFA Expo 2026

REFLECTION

Don't try to solve every pain points

The most important lesson from ToGather wasn't about cramming all the features into one app, but about understanding what travelers actually need to feel when they use the app. Covering every pain point sounds like an ideal, but in practice, it produced a product that is exhausting to navigate and emotionally disconnected from the experience of planning a trip with friends.

Usability testing is neccessary

Usability testing is what made that visible. Hearing the real users tell us that the app felt overwhelming and wasn't solving the thing that actually frustrated them, it was the most valuable design input I received across the entire project. User feedback gave me the permission to simplify, to focus, and to trust that solving one problem well is worth more than solving five problems halfway.

MADE WITH LOVE & MATCHA 🍵

Charlotte Truong

Product Designer

WORK

ABOUT

Resume

Charlotte Truong

Product Designer

WORK

ABOUT

Resume

Charlotte Truong

Product Designer

WORK

ABOUT

Resume