Case Study · Mobile App Design
Makombo
A collaborative travel planning platform that brings groups together: shared itineraries, real-time budget tracking, and collective decision-making in one place.
Make planning part of the journey.
Group travel planning had always been chaotic, scattered across messages, notes, and multiple apps. Makombo was designed to unify the entire process: from destination discovery to real-time budget tracking and shared itineraries, giving groups a single space to coordinate without the chaos.
Understanding Makombo
Makombo came to us with a clear challenge: group travel planning was completely broken. Every trip meant endless group chats, disconnected spreadsheets, and someone always managing everything alone. Our goal was to design a single coordinated space, one where planning felt as exciting as the trip itself.
Knowing Who We're Designing For
Before designing a single screen, we mapped the competitive landscape, segmented the market, built user personas, traced the journey, and defined user stories. Each layer gave us a degree of certainty, so every decision that followed had a reason behind it.
Mapping the Market
No existing platform combines real-time group collaboration, shared budgeting, and social discovery in a single travel-focused experience.
| Platform | Group Collab | Budget Split | AI Suggestions | Real-Time Sync | Social Layer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Trips | No | No | Partial | No | No |
| TripIt | Partial | No | No | Partial | No |
| Splitwise | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Airbnb | Partial | No | Partial | No | No |
| Makombo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Who Plans Group Trips
Four distinct traveler types emerged, each with different coordination challenges and different expectations about who should lead the planning.
22-34. Self-appointed planners for their social circle. Overwhelmed by logistics and resent being the only one managing everything.
24-32. Travel alone but want community. Need discovery tools and safe ways to connect with like-minded travelers.
26-40. Planning decisions cause friction between partners. Need shared wishlists and quick consensus tools.
28-45. Coordinating team retreats. Need structured itineraries, expense tracking, and RSVP management.
What Users Actually Need
Distilled from persona research and journey mapping, these stories defined the feature scope for the first version of Makombo.
- US-01 As a group trip organizer, I want to invite my friends to a shared itinerary, so planning is distributed and I am not the only one responsible.
- US-02 As a budget-conscious traveler, I want to log and split expenses in real time during the trip, so no one is surprised by the final cost.
- US-03 As a solo traveler, I want to discover destinations trending with similar travelers, so I can find places that match my style without extensive research.
- US-04 As a trip participant, I want to vote on suggested activities and dates, so decisions feel shared rather than imposed by the organizer.
- US-05 As a frequent traveler, I want all my bookings, flights, hotels, activities, in one timeline, so I always know what is next without switching apps.
- US-06 As any user, I want offline access to my itinerary while traveling, so I can navigate and stay on schedule even without mobile data.
Color, Type, and the Language of Adventure
Colors and a strong style guide establish the visual identity of an app. For Makombo, we chose a bold blue system that communicates movement, trust, and shared adventure, ensuring every screen feels part of the same cohesive journey.
(600) HEX #3B6AE0 Accessibility: 4.51:1 AA
(900) HEX #0B1C38 Accessibility: 19.8:1 AAA
Texts HEX #4D536F Accessibility: 7.64:1 AAA
(BG 50) HEX #FDFDFD Accessibility: 20.1:1 AAA
Where We Landed
The main challenge was keeping a feature-rich collaborative platform from feeling overwhelming. Makombo uses a modular card system and bold color hierarchy that guides groups through complex collective decisions without cognitive fatigue.
Your product,
built right.
Makombo showed what happens when you stop asking people to coordinate and start giving them a shared space to plan. If you're building a product where collaboration is the core value, let's talk.
