Naija Voyage - Tourist guide application

Naija Voyage is a mobile travel companion designed to simplify local trip planning across Nigeria. By unifying discovery, safety verification, budget estimation, and offline navigation into a single platform, the app transforms fragmented exploration into a seamless, confident experience.

Role

Product Designer (UX Research, Information Architecture, Visual Design, Prototyping)

Duration

2 months

Tools

Figma, Lyssna, Google Forms

Team

Sole Project

Table of Content

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Project Overview

Surveys carried out

User Interviews

92%

Relying on a disjointed tools

Problem Statement

Nigeria has a large mass land 923,768km(2) and diverse cultures. Nigeria has hundreds of destinations worth visiting, but the information about them is scattered, outdated and hard to trust. Travellers piece a trip together from Google, Instagram, WhatsApp groups and word of mouth — and still arrive unsure if the place is safe or the reviews were real.

Research & Discovery

What I found	How many	What it told me
Travellers juggle several disconnected tools to plan one trip	92%	The problem isn't a lack of apps — it's that nothing ties the pieces together
Getting trustworthy reviews from other travellers is a top challenge	33.3%	Cell 2-3
Safety and navigation are major concerns	30.6%	A trip isn't planned until the traveller knows how to get there and that it's safe
Many delegate planning to someone else to avoid the stress		Planning feels like work — the effort itself is a barrier

I surveyed 40 travellers to see how widespread the pain was, then interviewed 5 of them to understand why. The survey told me what was going wrong; the interviews told me why. By grouping their responses, I found four main challenges:

Design goals

I brainstormed widely, then kept only the features that answered a goal directly.

Make reviews believable — because 1 in 3 travellers couldn't find reviews they trusted. Reviews should come from verified travellers and show how recent they are.
Show safety before the trip, not after — because safety and navigation were the top deciding factors. A traveller should see a place's safety picture on the same screen where they decide to go.
Put the whole trip in one place — because 92% were stitching tools together. Discovery, planning, cost and directions should live in one flow.
Take the effort out of planning — because people were delegating trips to avoid the stress. The app should do the first draft of the plan for them.

User Flow

I organised the app around the order a traveller thinks in: get an idea, check it, keep it, ask others, go.

Home — the AI Planner sits here because planning effort was the biggest drop-off point; it's the first thing a stressed planner should see.
Explore — search and filter by budget and preference, since cost and safety are what people filter on.
Saved — trips are planned over days, so places need somewhere to wait.
Community — given its own tab, not buried in a detail page, because trust in other travellers was the core finding.
Profile — account and settings, kept out of the way.

Wireframing

I moved from low-fidelity paper sketches to mid-fidelity digital wireframes in Figma to establish structural hierarchy:

Home Dashboard: Prioritizes destination discovery and quick safety alerts.
Trip Planner Screen: budget sliders and day-by-day blocks, so people adjust a plan instead of building one from nothing.
Safety & Detail View: Reviews, safety, emergency contacts and costs on one screen, because that's where the go/no-go decision is made.

The final wireframes achieved an 88% task completion rate, compared to 51% on the original app.

Visual Design

The visual direction needed to feel energetic and appetizing while remaining fast and functional. I developed a warm, high-contrast design system using a saffron and charcoal palette with rounded components to keep the tone friendly and approachable.

Prototyping & Testing

I built an interactive prototype in Figma and tested it with five users to see how easily and quickly they could navigate the app.

Task 1: Select a destination that fits your budget
Task 2: Verify the safety of a route before you go

5 Test Participants 2 Testing Rounds 90% Task Success Rate

"Being able to save a new place and organize it was so easy and will be effective"

Iterations & Refinements

Iteration 1: The first Home led with a generic header and large destination cards, which treated the app like a listing site. [Tester observation.] I replaced it with a personal greeting and a prominent AI Planner button, so the first action matches the biggest pain: the effort of planning.

Iteration 2: The first version led with amenity icons and a big "Get directions" button, which assumed the traveller had already decided to go. [Tester observation.] I restructured it into Overview, Maps and Reviews tabs and added a Safety & Precautions card with a safety score, so the page answers "should I go?" before "how do I get there?".

Before

After

Final Design

The app is structured around five core navigation tabs: Home, Explore, Saved, Community, and Profile.

• Home → planning effort. Quick actions, distance filters and the AI Planner up front, so the trip starts with a draft, not a blank page.

• Destination page → trust and safety. Verified traveller reviews, a safety score and maps on one screen, so the decision to go is made with confidence.

• Community → trusted reviews. A feed where travellers share real trips, giving every review a face and a date.

• AI Planner → scattered tools. Builds and manages an itinerary from destination data, so planning no longer means switching apps.

Impact

"Built for the modern Nigerian traveler: discovery made simple, safety made certain."

Lessons Learned

In travel apps, speed and confidence matter more than visual richness

Adding real user reviews and safety tags was essential to build trust, since much of the travel information online is outdated.
We added offline access so users can still view their maps and itineraries when the network is bad.
Design is iterative; I designed the first high-fidelity but had to test with users who gave feedback based on their interaction, which made me redesign the home and explore page