What I owned
Designed both sides from scratch, a traveler app and an agency admin portal, grounded in research before a single wireframe.
Back to work04 / 05
0→1 · Marketplace · Travel · 2023
Two sides, zero users. A travel marketplace from nothing.
Built a two-sided travel marketplace from scratch, convincing offline agencies to go digital and travelers to leave Booking.com. No users on either side. Pure 0→1.
Travelers won't come without agencies. Agencies won't list without travelers. Two sides, zero users, and me talking to 200+ of them before I let myself draw a single screen.
+200+
survey respondents before a single wireframe
preview soon
- Role
- Product Designer · 0→1
- Duration
- 2023
- Platforms
- Mobile app + Agency admin portal
- Industry
- Travel · Marketplaces
The setup
Every marketplace starts with the same unsolvable paradox: travelers won't come without agencies, agencies won't list without travelers. Wandr had to solve both sides simultaneously, both starting from zero, in a market dominated by global OTAs with decade-long head starts.
Role & constraint
The constraint
A market owned by Booking.com and global OTAs with a decade head start, and offline agencies still running on WhatsApp and phone calls.
The problems
What was actually broken.
Problem 01
How do you get travelers to leave Booking.com?
Booking.com has trust, inventory, and a decade of UX refinement. Wandr needed agency-curated trips that felt different from commodity booking in the first 30 seconds.
Problem 02
How do you convince offline agencies to go digital?
Most agencies ran on WhatsApp and phone calls. Listing on Wandr had to be easier than posting on Instagram, or they wouldn't bother.
Problem 03
Group booking was broken everywhere
200+ respondents flagged it as the #1 friction point. Booking for multiple people, each with different info and documents, was a nightmare on every competing platform.
Problem 04
The dev team needed speed, not complexity
Early-stage startup, frequent pivots. The design system had to be lightweight enough to adapt, not a liability.
How it went
From signal to shipped.
Research first
Competitor analysis, agency workflow interviews, 200+ traveler surveys, and 6 personas, all before pixels.
Solve the #1 friction
Group booking is broken everywhere, so each traveler fills their own details inside one shared flow.
Lower the barrier
A trip-creation wizard faster than posting on Instagram, so offline agencies would actually switch.
The solutions
What I actually did about it.
01Solution 01 / 03
Research before pixels
Competitor analysis (Booking.com, Travco, Stamps, Gazef), agency workflow interviews, 200+ traveler survey, 6 personas across 3 segments, journey maps, all before a single wireframe.
Strategy grounded in real behavior
preview soon
02Solution 02 / 03
Multi-person booking, solved
Each traveler enters their own data independently inside one shared booking flow.
Designed the flow so group documents and preferences never collide.
The #1 industry friction point, fixed
preview soon
03Solution 03 / 03
An agency wizard faster than Instagram
Trip-creation wizard with drag-and-drop media upload and an analytics dashboard, faster to list a trip than to post about it.
Lower barrier for agencies to go digital
preview soon
By the numbers
+200+
survey respondents
6
personas across 3 segments
2
sides built from zero
4
competitors analyzed
Built on what people actually do. Not what we hoped they'd do.
Gallery
A closer look.
The screens behind the story. High-fidelity shots landing soon.
wandr/011:1
wandr/024:3
wandr/0316:9
wandr/044:3
Reflection
What I'd carry forward
I over-invested in research so I'd never have to redraw the product. By the time I wireframed, the hard calls were already made. In 0→1, the cheapest pixel is the one you never draw twice.
Next case · 05
Academia
196 out of 200. Best Design Award.