TRAVEL APP
A travel app designed to help explorers move beyond tourist traps, and uncover hidden gem locations.
UI/UX design
Branding
Role
UI/UX student designer
Timeline
10 weeks
team
Only me
platform
phone
01 / PROJECT OVERIVEW
Wandur is a maps app concept designed to solve overtourism by capping monthly access to hidden gems, preventing popular discovery from turning quiet places into crowded ones
02 / THE PROBLEM
Explorers who want authentic, non-touristy places are stuck using tools built to make every place they find go viral — and once a hidden gem is visible, there's nothing stopping it from becoming the next overcrowded stop.
1.52B
international tourist arrivals recorded in 2025 — up 4% from 2024
~5%
Average yearly growth in arrivals between 2009–2019, before the pandemic
Growth keeps concentrating in the same places. Cities like Paris, Barcelona, and Istanbul absorb most of the attention, leading to overcrowded streets, long queues, and real strain on the people who live there. Comparably interesting, quieter places get overlooked — not because they're less worth visiting, but because most discovery platforms (Google Maps, Instagram, TikTok) are built to reward visibility. The more a place gets shown, the more it gets visited, the more it gets shown again.
Problem statement:
Explorers often struggle to find authentic, non-touristy places. This happens because most discovery platforms reward high visibility, which pushes popular spots to become overcrowded while quiet locations remain hidden. How might we help people discover real hidden gems without triggering the viral trend that ruins them?
03 / Discovery & Research
Research combined desk research into overtourism data with qualitative research into how explorers currently find places and how they'd react to limited access
Competitors
Apps like Atlas Obscura and Spotted by Locals already solve discovery well Atlas Obscura plots its entire database on a map so explorers can find off-the-beaten-path places and add their own, while Spotted by Locals sources tips from real locals specifically to steer travelers away from tourist traps. Both are genuinely good at surfacing hidden places. Neither has any mechanism to limit how many people act on a tip once it's published — a place found through either app is exactly as exposed as one found on Instagram. That's the specific gap Wandur's capped-access model is designed to fill.
None of the competitors limit how many people can access a place they focus on inspiration, real-time rerouting, or local-written guides, but none address the root cause of a hidden gem eventually becoming overcrowded once discovered.
User personas
04 / Ideation
06/ Final Solution
Gems are only revealed within ~500m, keeping discovery adventurous instead of a browsable list.
A spot counts toward the cap automatically once navigation starts — no manual "claim" step, so the experience stays spontaneous, not transactional.
If a gem is full, users get a waitlist or a nearby alternative — never a dead end.
