Bay Area Trips

Most of the ideas were the same idea.

The brief arrived as a list: hotels, restaurants, nightlife, wineries, writers’ lounges and remote-work spaces; events, trips and scavenger hunts; a shop, a travel club, a concierge and EV charging; creator partnerships and kids’ accounts. Each one mattered to someone, and nothing said how they related.

Built as listed, it would have been a dozen small apps under one logo, each with its own rules, and more than the deadline and the budget allowed.

Most of the ideas were the same idea.

Before designing any screen, I mapped who the product served and what they would do in it. Most of the ideas turned out to be the same thing: a place someone can find, read about and act on. So stays, food, nightlife, wineries, wellness and remote work became categories of one directory, built on one listing template.

Events, trips and hunts sit beside the directory, because they happen at those places. Membership sits underneath everything, because it decides what each person can do. The website, the mobile web and the app follow the same structure, so a member or a business never has to learn the product twice.

Three accounts, each with its own job.

Members explore and book. Businesses run their place. Kids get their own view, set up by a parent. Each account has its own menu, so nobody sees tools that aren’t theirs.

Becoming a business is a step, not a setting. A member applies, the team checks the business, and only then do the business tools switch on. That keeps fake listings away from members and holds every business on the platform to the same standard.

Everything a member uses, a business makes.

A café creates an event and sets the ticket types; a member picks a ticket. A business builds a scavenger hunt, with missions, a prize and teams, and families play it across the city. Businesses post paid gigs, and local creators take them.

Designing both sides together kept them consistent: every field a business fills in becomes something a member sees or uses.

Kids explore. Parents stay in charge.

Kids get a simpler, brighter view with hunts, kids’ events and trips. They can’t pay in the app; they ask a parent instead. Parents see where a hunt has taken their child and what they’ve joined, and can book for them.

Family accounts come with the Gold membership, so the family side pays for itself.

What you pay for decides what you can do.

There are two memberships. Businesses choose a package on the website, from a free listing to Pro and Elite with their own app, IT support, team travel and trip credits. Members choose Silver or Gold in the app.

Gold also adds accounts for kids, more hunts and bigger teams, so membership is also how the product decides who can do what.