Ideation & Research

Before diving into design, we focused on understanding both the emotional and functional needs of our users. We asked:

What inspires people to explore new places?

How do they currently save, share, and revisit those experiences?

What makes a recommendation feel trustworthy and exciting?

We began by mapping out common travel behaviors and pain points through informal interviews and user journaling exercises. These insights helped generate initial concepts around:

Image-based discovery to inspire wanderlust

Saveable, customizable boards for planning and dreaming

Community-driven tips to make every find feel personal and real

Market Gaps

Instead of replicating existing travel apps, we looked for whitespace:

• Social apps like Pinterest help with saving ideas but lack local context.

• Travel blogs and guides give rich content but aren’t interactive or personalized.

• Map-based apps help you get there but don’t inspire why you should go.

This gap led us to position Drop A Pin as a hybrid of inspiration and utility — blending aesthetics with real-time, location-based function.

Design Priorities from Research

From this research, we defined three guiding principles:

1. Visual-first design to spark discovery at a glance.

2. Community contribution to encourage trust and belonging.

3. Save and sort easily so users could dream and plan all in one place.