Now or Never is an app designed for young backpackers who love spontaneous adventures.
Instead of over-planning, it helps them find and join real-time local events with minimal effort.
The app notifies users once a day with nearby activities, giving them just 5 seconds to decide. No more long planning or coordination — just quick, exciting opportunities to explore and connect with other travelers on the go.
Our goal was to create a tool that makes spontaneous experiences easy and fun, bridging the gap between travelers and local culture.
Backpackers often face challenges such as boredom during downtime, difficulty finding local events, and the lack of platforms for spontaneous, safe meetups.
Existing solutions either require heavy planning or focus on long-term travel. We aimed to create an app that enabled serendipity—making spontaneous plans simple, safe, and engaging.
We designed "Now or Never" to empower young backpackers with an effortless way to find and join real-time, local events.
With a focus on spontaneity, the app simplifies decision-making through quick, swipe-based event selection, ensuring users can explore new adventures daily without extensive planning.
By connecting like-minded travelers, the app makes travel more engaging, fostering safe, spontaneous meetups.
I conducted a deep dive into competitors like Eventbrite, Bumble BFF, and Meetup.
While these platforms enable event discovery and social connections, they lacked the spontaneous nature we sought.
In parallel, we conducted an ecosystem analysis to explore Lonely Planet's role in the travel journey and identify key opportunities to enhance in-person connections during the "Planning - During Travel" phase.
With my team, I conducted interviews with 22 backpackers from 16 different countries across six hostels in Barcelona.
Their feedback confirmed that while travelers loved meeting new people, they often didn’t want to invest time in planning.
This insight solidified our mission: create an app that serves adventure on-the-go.
Using the personal interviews with our target audience as a guide, we created user personas. User Persona characteristics can be best described as follows -
Spontaneous Adventurers: They share a common desire to meet new people and embrace new experiences without extensive planning.
Diversity in Habits: Some are active on social media, while others prefer staying offline. Some travel solo, while others journey in groups.
Varied Event Interests: They have diverse interests when it comes to local events and activities during their travels.
Primary Persona: Shalev, a 22-year-old solo traveler seeking spontaneous in-person connections and meaningful experiences without extensive planning.
Our mood boards pulled inspiration from apps that prioritize quick decision-making and gamification.
We sketched initial concepts, merging elements from various apps to ensure users could seamlessly find and commit to activities.
I created low-fidelity wireframes to visualize the core flows of the app, such as onboarding, event selection, and event creation.
These Annotated Wireframes guided discussions with developers and ensured alignment across the team.
After initial testing, I iterated on the design based on feedback, refining the event confirmation system and user chat functionalities.
This led to an enhanced experience that was both spontaneous and user-friendly.
Objective: CREATE EVENT
Users can create their own activities and invite friends to join.
Design:
A form-based interface for entering activity details, including name, city, category, date, time, age restrictions, and entry fees.
Activation:
Once the details are validated, the event goes live, and users can use the app's features like Chat, Map, and Share.
After initial testing, I iterated on the design based on feedback, refining the event confirmation system and user chat functionalities. This led to an enhanced experience that was both spontaneous and user-friendly.
We decided to go with shades of orange as it represents joy and an outgoing feeling which resonates to the theme of this application.
For the typography we chose a clean and bold font Montserrat.
We designed few custom components & icons which go well with the theme and vibe of the application.
A sitemap is a visual representation, like a map, displaying the organization and interconnection of pages or screens within a website or app. It serves as a roadmap for understanding the structure and relationships between different components.
For this MVP, we designed 10 pages. Sitemap aids in clear communication among development teams, facilitating the creation of a cohesive and efficient digital solution.
The importance of ensuring the app's usability cannot be overstated. Users have a mere 5 seconds to make decisions, making ease of use a critical factor.
User research unveiled diverse habits, including social media preferences and varying travel companions (solo or in groups).
Regardless of differences, all users were looking for in-person connections with fellow travelers during their journey.
The user research revealed the golden opportunity in the market for connecting travelers in-person, especially during the journey.
The inclusion of a report feature adds an important layer of safety, addressing potential misuse or fraudulent activity, and ensuring user trust.
The app successfully blends the spontaneity travelers desire with practical features like chat, mapping, and sharing for event planning.
Working on our own, yet together :)
Trying out new & different ways to find solutions.
With my team, discussing & working on the ideas using whiteboard.