Reframing travel around traveler mental models.

At Tripadvisor, I contributed to a larger redesign of the brand, web, and app experience. The central problem was structural: the product reflected internal business silos like Hotels, Restaurants, and Attractions more than the way travelers actually think, which made the overall experience feel fragmented.

The opportunity was to reframe the platform around a more connected traveler journey that could support planning, booking, discovery, and sharing in a single system.

We used research and analytics to understand traveler behavior, then translated those patterns into a new experience architecture built around major mental models like discovery and proximity. Instead of forcing people to navigate category silos first, the redesigned structure started with destination and supported movement across the full travel journey.

This work made it easier to connect content, booking paths, and local exploration in a way that felt more natural to how people actually plan trips.

The result was a more cohesive platform foundation for personalization and ongoing engagement. Users could follow activity from destinations, hotels, restaurants, forums, and reviews, while the home feed surfaced more relevant content across the journey from inspiration through sharing.

That stronger personalization layer also created better opportunities for commerce cross-sells and targeted advertising by aligning recommendations more closely to traveler context.

• Shifted the product toward a geo-based experience model
• Improved the foundation for personalization across the travel journey
• Created clearer opportunities for cross-sells and targeted ads