TripSwap
Brief
Team
Ali Post
Cooper Baum
Focus
Duration
3 months
YEAR
2025
Initial Research
What issues exist in tourism?
Before creating TripSwap, we surveyed tourists and locals in high-traffic areas like SeaTac airport and Pike Place Market to understand tourism-related challenges. We found that while travelers sought authentic experiences, they often lacked the knowledge to pursue these experiences respectfully, in ways that avoid harm to local economies and ecosystems.
Research Findings
According to our research, we found that 56.1% of locals believe that tourists do not respect local communities and spaces. Some common sentiments were:
Tourists are entitled, disrespect rules, and treat workers poorly or as "part of the attraction."
Tourists lack a sense of accountability or responsibility for their actions (especially in natural locations like national parks or nature reserves).
Tourists crowd popular locations, often missing out on more authentic experiences.
Similarly, 57.5% of tourists surveyed reported that they don’t take any measures to minimize their environmental or cultural impact while traveling. Common claims among tourists about their ability to minimize their negative impacts were:
"Not obvious what measures would be effective. Not many alternative options."
Environmentally-friendly options are more expensive
Initial Sketching
With a clear design opportunity, we generated 60 ideas to help tourists experience destinations authentically while respecting local culture. We encouraged creative, outside-the-box thinking before narrowing them down based on feasibility and our interest in developing the concept.
Downselecting
Downselecting to Three Concepts
Each of us picked our favorite of our own ideas and made a poster outlining the idea itself and why it aligns with our core goal of helping tourists explore destinations more authentically and respectfully. Cooper came up with TourisTips, Ali came up with Local Lens, and I created TripSwap
Refining
Feedback on Concepts
Feedback overwhelmingly favored TripSwap. Classmates appreciated that TripSwap would be able to include many of the best features of TourisTips—like local-provided respect tips and hidden gems—while bundling them alongside other features so the entire app didn't feel dedicated to lecturing the user about how to be respectful. Classmates also appreciated the utility of Local Lens but felt it would be more useful as a app, rather than a fixed kiosk.
Participatory Design Workshop
To better understand the exact features and functions the app would need to best serve users, we conducted a participatory design workshop with three different kinds of travelers:
Shannon, 53, a mother of two who travels occasionally for more laid-back vacations
Katherine, 22, a recent college grad who travels for long stretches of time
Raleigh, 22, another recent college grad who goes on frequent short trips.
Card Sorting Activity
To gather data from our travelers, we had them each participate in multi-step card sorting activities. To begin, we asked participants to write down some of the things that they found to be challenging about travel. Shared challenges included:
Finding/deciding where to go during the trip
Finding/deciding where to eat
The entire airport experience
Budgeting
Getting around
Deciding where to stay
Generally "Maximizing" trip time
We followed up on this exercise by asking participants to sort these challenges based on whether or not they'd trust an app to handle these tasks for them. Of the above, participants would trust an app to help them:
Find/decide where to go during the trip
Find/decide where to eat
Generally "Maximize" trip time
Participants agreed that certain aspects of the trip — like deciding where to stay and booking plane tickets — were things they'd still prefer to do themselves.
Finally, we asked participants what would incentivize them to plan a trip for someone else. Some responses included:
Money
Discounts or deals at local businesses
An in-app point system
Storyboarding
Illustrations by Ali
Screens by Cooper and I
Design Concept
After all of our research, we arrived at our final design concept for TripSwap. At its core, TripSwap is a travel planning app that allows tourists to book fully planned trips created by locals from their destination. Locals get paid a flat fee by each tourist who chooses to go on their trip, and in return, the tourist is able to chat with their local for food recs, travel tips, and any other questions they might have about the location.
Our design decisions were greatly influenced by our early-stage user research and testing. Feedback survey conducted at the start of the project helped us identify key pain points surrounding tourism, notably the daunting task of planning an itinerary and difficulty finding authentic experiences. This helped us arrive at the core-concept of the app.
Our card sorting activity helped us understand what features different kinds of travelers thoughts to be important, and also what would incentivize locals to create trips for tourists.
Storyboarding allowed us to visualize the end-to-end experience of actually using TripSwap, which helped us think about a number of nice-to-have's that we might add in future iterations.
