Overview
Sanchari is a user-friendly travel discovery app that helps users explore attractions in any selected state or city across India. It provides detailed place descriptions for each place, transport options, and nearby attractions all in one centralized platform. The app offers features like search, filters, saved places, and intuitive navigation to simplify trip planning. Whether for tourists or locals, Sanchari makes discovering India’s cultural and natural wonders easier than ever.
Timeline
Dec 2024 - March 2025
Role
UX Designer
Tools
Figma
Responsibilities
​My responsibilities as UX designer
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Conducted user interviews to gather insights
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Sketched wireframes on paper to visualize user flows.
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Created low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes in Figma.
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Conducted usability testing to identify pain points.
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Iterated designs after each round of feedback.
Problem
When tourists visits India, they often lack a centralized, user-friendly platform to explore hidden gems and famous attractions. Without a dedicated app, travelers tend to rely on expensive tour packages that may not showcase the full breadth of experiences, resulting in missed opportunities and higher costs.
At the same time, local residents who want to discover attractions within their state also face challenges finding accurate and updated information. Without easy access to details such as descriptions, best times to visit, transportation options, or nearby attractions, planning becomes inconvenient.
There is a clear need for a digital platform that makes it easier for both tourists and residents to discover, plan, and explore India's rich heritage and natural beauty confidently.
User Surveys & Interviews
To ensure the design of Sanchari was truly user-centered, I conducted comprehensive user research that combined Google Form surveys and in-person interviews. This mixed-method approach helped me uncover real pain points, desires, and behaviors around discovering and planning trips in India.
Engaging with participants from diverse backgrounds, I gathered both quantitative and qualitative data that informed every aspect of my design. The survey responses provided clear trends about the challenges of finding authentic, detailed travel information, while the in-person discussions revealed deeper insights about expectations, frustrations, and essential features. These conversations and survey results shaped the overall direction of Sanchari, ensuring it was both relevant and user-friendly.
In addition to the Google Form survey, I also conducted one-on-one interviews with international students residing in India to gather deeper qualitative insights. During these interviews, I asked targeted questions to uncover user pain points, preferences, and expectations for a travel discovery app like Sanchari.
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Some of the key questions I asked included:
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"Do you find it easy to plan trips and discover places in India?"
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"How important is transportation information when deciding to visit a place?"
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"Would you use a feature that lets you save or bookmark places to visit later?"
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"Do you often consider nearby attractions when planning a trip?"​
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The feedback was consistent with my survey results. Many participants expressed frustration with fragmented information across multiple sources and the lack of reliable transport details. They highlighted the value of having a single app that offers comprehensive details, including nearby attractions and transport modes, which directly validated the features I incorporated into Sanchari’s design.
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Additionally, participants confirmed that a save-for-later feature would be extremely useful, especially for planning trips over multiple days or in different locations. Their insights reinforced the need for easy navigation, filtered search options, and detailed place pages.
User Survey Takeaways
As we can observe from the above user surveys, we can say that most participants find it difficult to discover reliable information about places to visit in India. Many shared their frustration with relying on multiple fragmented sources and expensive travel packages that do not offer comprehensive details.
A large majority expressed a strong interest in having a single, user-friendly platform that provides detailed place descriptions, nearby attractions, and transportation options to make the trip planning process easier and more efficient. These insights reveal a clear need for a centralized and traveler-friendly approach to exploring and planning trips across India.
Affinity Mapping
Meet the Users
To design a solution that truly reflects travelers’ needs, I created detailed user personas based on insights gathered through interviews and surveys. By connecting with participants from diverse backgrounds which includes local travelers, families, and international visitors, I uncovered their daily routines, motivations, and frustrations around discovering and planning trips within India. These conversations helped me step into their shoes and understand their goals, pain points, and expectations. This forms the foundation for realistic, relatable personas that guided every design decision in Sanchari.
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Based on the insights I gathered, I created three distinct user personas.
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Gaurav Kumar - A tech-savvy traveler from Mumbai who enjoys spontaneous weekend trips and prefer quick, reliable travel planning tools.
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Priya - A family-oriented school teacher from Hyderabad looking for an easy way to plan multi-day trips with her children, focusing on family-friendly options.
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De villiers - An international exchange student from Germany exploring India, seeking clear transport details and authentic local experiences with minimal hassle.
Exploration, Ideation
& Wireframes
In the ideation phase of Sanchari, I focused on addressing core challenges highlighted by user insights such as fragmented travel information, lack of detailed transport options and missing features for saving places.
To ensure a seamless and engaging experience, I mapped out the entire user journey from selecting a state or city to discovering detailed place information, transport options, near by attractions and saving favorite places. This helped me to identify opportunities to simplify navigation and streamline the planning process.
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With these priorities in mind, initial sketches of the core screens were drawn on paper, leading to the development of the low-fidelity wireframes in Figma.
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After completing the initial set of low-fidelity wireframes. I conducted unmoderated usability testing to observe how users interact with the core navigation and task flows. The testing revealed a valuable insight: users expected the ability to save places at multiple stages of journey, including the state selected and city selected pages, rather than only after viewing the detailed place information.
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This feedback highlighted a critical user need for more flexibility in planning and saving destinations. Based on these observations, I refined the wireframes by adding the save options in pages, as seen in updated flow images. This iterative approach ensured that the design evolved to meet user expectations and delivered a smoother, more user-friendly experience.
Usability Testing
I developed an interactive prototype and conducted usability testing with a diverse group of users, including both local residents and international travelers and international students. The sessions were designed to observe how easily users could navigate Sanchari, discover attractions, save places all without prior guidance.​
​Scenario: The user wants to plan a trip by exploring famous places in a selected state or city in India, viewing nearby attractions, transport details, and saving favorite spots for future reference.
Task 1: Select a state or city and explore the list of famous places.
Task 2: Click on a place to view detailed information, including descriptions, nearby attractions, and transport options.
Task 3: Save favorite places for future planning.
The usability testing sessions provided actionable feedback that reinforced key aspects of the design such as clarity, intuitive navigation, and the smooth experience of saving places. Participants appreciated the detailed place information, nearby attractions, and transport details, which made trip planning easier and more reliable. This validation from real users gave me confidence in the overall design and helped me refine the interface to truly support travelers in exploring and planning trips across India confidently.
User Interface Designs
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SANCHARI taught me
Working on Sanchari made me realize the importance of understanding user needs before jumping into design. Through surveys, interviews, and usability testing, I saw the challenges travelers face from scattered information to confusing navigation and how thoughtful design can solve those problems.
I learned so much during this process, especially the value of iterating based on real feedback rather than assumptions. Most importantly, this project showed me that UX is about more than just visuals. It’s about creating experiences that make people’s lives easier and finally, Sanchari has not only expanded my design skills but also ignited my passion for crafting user-centered solutions that simplify and enrich everyday experiences.