Cart &
Trip Planning.
Helping people plan and book a whole trip, starting with a place to save their choices.
Connecting Agoda’s travel products
Agoda was expanding beyond hotels into flights, homes and activities. I joined a new packages team to help connect those products into one travel experience, working with an associate designer, product managers and engineers.
We could ship a familiar shopping cart quickly. But I wanted us to understand how people actually planned trips first, so the first release could support a longer-term direction.
Trip planning happens over time
I partnered with Agoda’s product insights team on a diary study following 15 Singaporean travellers. We explored how they found inspiration, set budgets, compared options and coordinated their bookings.
The research changed the job of Cart: it needed to help people pick up where they left off, not just check out multiple items.
Decisions happen over time
Flights, stays and activities are often booked at different stages, across several sessions.
Comparing creates anxiety
People switch between platforms, weighing price and trade-offs before feeling ready to book.
The details get scattered
Confirmations, plans and receipts need to be kept together and shared with other travellers.
Explore the journey with wireframes
We used wireframes to tell the story of a Stockholm-to-Bangkok trip. Keeping the visuals simple helped stakeholders discuss the journey, from saving a hotel to returning for flights and transfers.
Save a possibility
Add a hotel to Cart while continuing to compare options.
Build on a booking
Turn the first booking into a trip, with relevant next steps.
Come back to the plan
A shared itinerary that can grow as more of the trip takes shape.
Connect the booking to the rest of the trip
The vision connected Cart, an automatically generated trip, contextual suggestions and a shareable itinerary. It gave teams a common direction while we planned the first release.
Phase 1: save and book together
Phase 1 focused on saving items, selecting what to book and checking out together. We kept activities, cross-sells and up-sells out of the MVP, reused the design system and involved engineers early to keep the work achievable.
Cart launched on mobile web in December 2021 with multi-booking and bundle savings. The broader trip-planning experience remained the next phase.
Handle changing prices and availability
Saving a travel product does not freeze its price or availability. We worked through changing prices, loading states, different product types and editing actions with teams across Agoda.
Next: turn bookings into a trip
In January 2022, we began exploring the next phase: a Trips experience that brought bookings into a timeline and helped people discover places and activities along the way.
These are the early concepts from that phase. The bigger lesson was to agree on the whole journey, then build useful pieces of it—bringing research, design and engineering into the decisions together.
Full original case study