TasteVoyage is a mobile platform designed to help travelers quickly find and book authentic local food experiences. I led research, strategy, and design to create a curated, intuitive discovery and booking experience that balances aspiration with accessibility.
Solo Product & Brand Designer
(UX Research, Brand Identity, UI Design)
12 Weeks
Figma, Zoom, Adobe Creative Suite
Travelers struggle to find authentic local food experiences and often settle on generic, tourist-focused options.
Key Pain Points:
How might I create a platform that feels authentic, curated, and transparent without making users feel excluded or overwhelmed?
Success Metric:
Increase booking confidence from 5/10 to 8/10 (measured by moderated usability studies and unmoderated system usability scale (SUS) assessments.
Research
Before designing anything, I needed to understand what was getting in the way. A survey with 12 active travelers gave me data fast, and the answer pointed somewhere I didn’t expect. It wasn’t the price holding people back, it was anxiety over authenticity and language. Using that data alongside food tourism market research, I identified four primary personas: Bella (budget traveler), Brooklyn (immersive traveler), Ethan (family traveler), and Leo (luxury traveler). I then mapped the journey for each, identifying key pain points and improvement opportunities at every stage.
Competitor Analysis
I analyzed four competitors – Private Chef Services, Airbnb Experiences, Local Food Tours, and EatWith – to see where the market was missing the mark. After looking at both the functional and visual gaps, the opportunity for TasteVoyage became clear: to bridge the space between exclusive private services and raw, local authenticity. My goal was to combine that accessibility of a global platform with the intimacy of community-led dining, creating a ‘boutique’ experience for explorers who want genuine cultural immersion without the tourist clichés.
Design Strategy & Brand System
Discovery revealed three core principles: curation over volume, transparency builds trust, and aspiration & accessibility. Before wireframing, I established the brand foundation to ensure every UX decision reinforced the brand promise. I wanted the platform to feel like an extension of a dinner party, warm, inviting, centered on people. Colors were pulled directly from photography of shared meals. A quiet UI with generous white space ensures the app frames the community’s content rather than competing with it. I also moved away from generic icon libraries, redesigning each icon in Figma to match the brand’s specific geometry and weight. All colors were tested to WCAG 2.2 AA standards with a minimum 48x48 touch targets on mobile.
Wireframes & Usability Testing
I began by sketching layouts for the entire user journey before moving into low-fidelity wireframes in Figma. During my first usability study with six participants, I quickly realized that I was overwhelming them with too much at once, which led to fairly generalized feedback. Drawing from my teaching background, I decided to scaffold the process and narrow the scope strictly to the Search & Discovery. This pivot allowed for two rounds of targeted insights. Round 1 showed that sorting options were buried, and text-based locations felt disconnected; by Round 2, I confirmed that a map toggle and one-tap sorting directly resolved these hurdles, helping users make faster, more confident decisions.
Discovery & Smart Search
The Search and Discovery experience starts with a simple question: "Where will you taste next?" I wanted that first interaction to feel aspirational. To keep that momentum going, I broke the search flow into three quick, digestible steps, where, when, and who, so the user never hits that "blank form" fatigue. I was also very intentional with the language. Calling the results "Curated for you" rather than "Search results" changes the entire vibe; it signals that there's a thoughtful human element behind the suggestions. Finally, I brought in the map toggle as a direct response to what I saw in usability testing. Some people just need to see the world spatially to make sense of it, and this lets them orient themselves without ever breaking their flow.
Trust & Transparency
Research pointed to one recurring theme: travelers don't just want a great meal, they want the confidence to say "yes". The experience page layers in language tags, precise locations, and a full price breakdown to remove friction before it arises. Verified badges, video host intros, and direct messaging transform a faceless booking into a connection with a real person to turn a stranger into a trusted guide before the traveler has even committed.
Frictionless Booking
Once at the point of highest intent, the booking flow gets out of the way. Availability surfaces at a glance, a full order summary appears before payment, and the confirmation is warm and immediate. The result is a streamlined two-minute journey that replaces uncertainty with clarity.
Post-booking Connection
The experience doesn't just stop at checkout; it begins there. Travelers are immediately connected to their host and prompted to share dietary restrictions and preferences, so personalization starts before arrival. The booking hub keeps everything in one place, with host messages deliberately separated from general support so the personal connection never gets buried. This post-booking layer was the gap in every competitor analyzed, and the feature most likely to turn a one-time traveler into a returning user.
Desktop Translation
While TasteVoyage was designed mobile-first, a significant portion of travel bookings happens on desktop. I explored how the experience would scale, using the expanded grid to surface more options at a glance, and bringing filter controls forward so desktop users can refine without extra navigation steps.
TasteVoyage is a conceptual project, but the design was validated through moderated usability testing and benchmarked against industry standards. The confidence improvement was driven primarily by clearer filtering, improved visual hierarchy, and map-based spatial context.
One of my most significant takeaways from this project was the value of narrowing the scope to deepen the impact. Pulling from my teaching background, I recognized that introducing too many concepts overwhelms the user and produces shallow understanding. Narrowing the testing to the Search and Discovery phase produced clear, actionable feedback to improve the user journey significantly.
During this project, I also explored establishing a strong visual identity early on. This was inspired by my study of Andrew Couldwell's book "Laying the Foundations". I made the intentional decision to move away from the community icon libraries and redesigned each icon in Figma to be cohesive across the brand, so the UI felt custom and intentional.
