The Challenge

Travelers don’t trust generic OTA listings. Reviews are anonymous, itineraries are vague, and there’s little accountability once the booking is done. Younger travelers, especially Gen Z, have shifted their discovery to TikTok and Instagram, but those platforms don’t connect to bookable experiences.

Hosts need better tools to scale trust. They can’t just rely on a profile picture and a line of text. They need structured ways to show what their experiences are, who they are, and why travelers should trust them.

Our job was to build a system where trust and discovery were inseparable , not bolted on after the fact.

My Role

I led product and design across the MVP, working with squads distributed across Canada, Pakistan, and Brazil. My role wasn’t just to design flows or prioritize a backlog, it was to create the systems and frameworks that allowed the team to move quickly, stay aligned, and build something coherent.

• Product Strategy: Sequenced the roadmap into three themed sprints (social → discovery → booking).
• Design Leadership: Directed app navigation, feed design, booking flows, and review functionality.
• Cross-functional Orchestration: Aligned engineers, designers, and ops across three continents.
• Org Practices: Transitioned teams from Jira to Plane and restructured epics, stories, and tasks to fit hybrid squads.

The Approach

We worked in arcs, each sprint layering onto the last:

1. Videos & Profiles: gave us the social foundation, TikTok-style feed, profile pages, engagement.
2. Search & Navigation: built discovery flows, filters, and search.
3. Booking & Post-Tours: tied it together with trust: reviews, cancellation flows, refund clarity.

The sequencing mattered. We didn’t start with booking because trust isn’t something you bolt on. It has to grow out of the way people discover, engage, and connect.

Solution Pillars

1. Trust & Transparency

• Rich experience pages with itineraries, host profiles, and transparent pricing.
• Video & text reviews for accountability.
• Cancellation flows with clear refund breakdowns.

2. Quality Content & Discovery

• TikTok-style video feed with city, experience, and following filters.
• Social tagging, location metadata, and 'See More' deep links to experiences.

3. Scalable IA & Booking

• Global search with filters for city, date, price, and accessibility.
• Experiences hub with tabs for all, booked, and saved.
• Booking confirmation with shareable link, guest management, and refund policies.

4. Operational Foundations

• BOAT moderation tool extended to TripShepherd for content, users, and experiences.
• Analytics framework spanning growth, sales, and engagement.

Reviews as the Keystone

Reviews became the growth loop, more than just feedback:

• Guests gain trust from authentic video and text reviews.
• Hosts build reputation and credibility.
• Platform collects structured data for better recommendations.
• Content from reviews feeds back into discovery.

Accessibility Concerns

From the start, we knew TripShepherd had to work for everyone. Travel apps lean heavily on video, imagery, and dense booking flows, all of which can become barriers if not designed with accessibility in mind. To address this, we aligned our design and development process with the AODA pillars (POUR framework: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust).

Perceivable: Every image, icon, and video has alt text or captions. We built video uploads with automatic captioning in mind, knowing this benefits not just accessibility but also Gen Z travelers who default to sound-off browsing.

Operable: All interactive elements (buttons, filters, booking forms) meet minimum touch-target sizes and support keyboard navigation for users relying on assistive devices.

Understandable: Labels are clear, flows are predictable, and booking errors provide actionable suggestions (e.g., “Choose a different time slot” instead of a vague “Invalid entry”).

Robust: We implemented semantic structures and ARIA roles across the app to ensure compatibility with screen readers, with a roadmap to expand into voice commands and haptic confirmations.

Future Vision

Accessibility shouldn’t stop at compliance. We’re planning:

• AI-generated transcripts for user travel videos.
• Inclusive booking metadata: Hosts mark experiences as wheelchair accessible, sensory-friendly, or ASL-supported.
• Customizable UI: In-app font scaling and high-contrast themes.
• Alternative discovery modes: Text-based summaries of map results for low-vision users.

By embedding accessibility into TripShepherd’s foundation, we’re not just checking boxes, we’re expanding who gets to explore the world.