Reimagining travel planning on Google Search cover
← Case study · Google3 min read

Reimagining travel planning on Google Search

In a 10-week summer sprint, we gave Google Search a way to plan trips, not just answer queries. The framework fed into the 2024 Search roadmap.

Role
UX Engineer
Duration
Summer 2024
Team
3 UX Designers, 1 UX Researcher, 1 Product Manager
Skills
Interaction Design, Prototyping, Concept Exploration, Research Synthesis
10 weekssummer design sprint
4 designersone team, one shared framework
3 stagesof trip planning, mapped into one framework
Problem
Most travellers start without a destination, and Search treated every visit as new.
What I did
Owned the third stage, Rediscover the journey, and pulled all three stages into one connected prototype.
Outcome
UX leadership validated the framework, and it fed into the 2024 Search roadmap.

Overview

Search was built for one query. Trip planning takes weeks. In a 10-week summer design sprint at Google, a team of four designed a planning framework for Search that UX leadership validated, and it fed into the 2024 Search roadmap.

Problem

Most travellers start without a destination. Search treated every visit as new, with nothing to spark ideas, compare options or remember where you were, so people patched it together with tabs and screenshots.

Day 1
3
8
12
17
21
26
30
34
Search today: every visit starts from zero.
Illustration — One trip, 34 days. Every visit starts from zero.

Goal

Help travellers go from “I want to go somewhere” to a booked trip, across weeks of searching, without starting over.

Research

Before touching a frame, I went deep into Google’s existing research. Most travellers hadn’t picked a destination, dates or even a trip length.

Travellers were already working around it. Tricks for finding cheap flights spread on TikTok as hacks, not as anything Search offered. To us, every hack was a feature waiting to be designed.

Three gaps kept coming up: getting inspired, comparing without losing context, and picking up where you left off. They became the framework.

Framework

Three stages, one designer each. I owned stage three, Rediscover the journey, and pulled all three into one experience, since they’d been designed separately.

Get inspiredA visual surface for destinations, stays and things to do.See how ↓Look into alternativesSide-by-side comparisons with price and sustainability cues.See how ↓Rediscover the journeySearch history, curated and kept up to date between sessions.See how ↓
or drag the plane
Illustration — Drag the plane through the three stages of planning a trip.

I. Get inspired

A visual, cross-vertical surface that surfaces destinations, stays, and things to do before any destination has been decided on.

Google
weekend getaway✕
ImagesCheapUnderratedBestHoliday
Title
Video
PhotoCategory
PhotoCategory
Photo
GIF / Slideshow
Photo
Map
Photo
GIF / Slideshow
Photo
Photo
Video
Photo
Illustration — Get inspired low-fidelity concept
Get inspired high-fidelity prototype, without a map
— Without map: broad exploration
Get inspired high-fidelity prototype, with a map
— With map: contextual exploration

II. Look into alternatives

Side-by-side comparisons with price signals and sustainability cues to help weigh tradeoffs without jumping between tabs.

Google
flights to $city✕
ImagesCheapUnderratedBestHoliday
Flights to $city
Suggestions
City A
City B
City C
More to compare
Illustration — Look into alternatives low-fidelity concept
Look into alternatives high-fidelity prototype
— Look into alternatives high-fidelity prototype

III. Rediscover the journey

A curated view of the user's search history, personalised and kept up to date, so returning to a trip mid-planning feels like picking up a conversation, not starting a new one. Results are ranked by how likely they are to engage you, so the strongest picks stand out.

LondonSuggested based on previous search
◎Things to do you looked atCamden Market, Harry Potter Studio Tour
High engagingCamden Market
Low engagingTower Bridge
Low engagingBorough Market
Illustration — Five visits over 34 days. Each picks up where the last left off, with the most engaging results shown biggest.
Rediscover the journey high-fidelity prototype
— Rediscover the journey high-fidelity prototype

Prototyping

Sketches first, to align the team before going high-fidelity.

Sketching and aligning with the team before prototyping
— Me in action: sketching with the team before going high-fidelity.

Then I built high-fidelity prototypes in React with live Google Maps, which Figma couldn’t do at the time. They went straight into research sessions, so we tested motion and map interactions, not static screens.

Outcome

Adopted into the roadmapConcepts were validated by the UX steering committee and directly informed Search's planning priorities.
Shifted the product directionThe work helped define the 2024 Google Search shift on the product roadmap and supported the move toward more visual, cross-vertical results.
Prototype as a research toolReact prototypes with real Maps data replaced static mocks in user testing, producing sharper and more reliable insights.
A unified experienceThree separately designed stages were brought into a single coherent visual and interaction language.

All of this happened during a major reorg at Google, while teams and priorities shifted. Getting the work onto the roadmap in that climate was its own win.