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After countless debugging sessions, failed deployments, and an entire day spent fixing production issues, I’m excited to finally share that WanderLust is LIVE.
The Problem
While traveling with family, I often noticed how frustrating accommodation booking can be. Most people either visit hotels physically or send someone ahead just to check whether the place is worth staying in.
There’s very little transparency, and booking often feels uncertain.
That inspired me to build WanderLust — an Airbnb-inspired platform designed to make the process simpler, transparent, and accessible from anywhere.
What WanderLust Offers
Property owners can create and manage listings with images, pricing, and descriptions
Travelers can browse accommodations remotely without physical visits
Users can read authentic reviews from previous guests before making decisions
Secure authentication, booking flow, and review management
Only verified owners can edit their own listings
The goal was simple: reduce the hassle of finding a place to stay and create a smoother experience for both travelers and property owners.
The Journey
Building the project was challenging, but deploying it was an even bigger learning experience.
I deployed the application more than 30 times before finally getting everything stable on Railway. Along the way, I dealt with:
Case-sensitivity deployment crashes
Serverless issues
npm dependency conflicts
Git rename problems
Production bugs that never appeared locally
Those struggles taught me something important:
Tutorials teach you how to build features.
Production teaches you how to solve problems.
Tech Stack
Node.js · Express.js · MongoDB Atlas · Mongoose · EJS · Passport.js · Cloudinary · MVC Architecture · Railway
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
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🎴 TASTY TEST 06/30: Which travel discovery experience would you choose?
Traveling Up is probably my first mobile concept outside client work in almost three years. It was inspired by a trip where not knowing the destination was part of the fun.
Same app. Same destination. Two ways to discover it.
🤍 A Clean Carousel
Calmer, lighter, more familiar.
💚 B Immersive Deck
Bigger imagery, stronger overlap, more tactile navigation.
Which one makes you want to swipe and see where the app takes you next?
A or B? 👇
#MobileAppDesign #TravelApp #MobileUX #UIDesign #ProductDesign #AsolDesign
23 voted
49%
24 voted
51%
47 votes
Closed
🧠 GROWTH TIP 06/30: DON’T START WITH WHERE. START WITH THE FEELING.
Most travel apps start with one question: “Where do you want to go?”
That works when the user already knows the answer. But a lot of travel discovery starts earlier, with a much less specific thought: I want to go somewhere, I just don’t know where yet.
That idea became Traveling Up, a travel randomizer concept.
Instead of asking users to work through dozens of filters, the product starts with just three signals:
🌍 how much time they have
🎭 how they want the trip to feel
☀️ what kind of climate they prefer
The destination stays a surprise.
Hypothesis: removing destination selection from the first step could move users faster from vague travel intent to genuine interest in one specific trip.
What I would test:
• Destination first search vs Mood first randomizer
• Randomize start rate
• Destination save rate
• Plan this trip CTR
• Time to first interesting destination
💡 Growth insight: in discovery products, uncertainty is not always friction. Sometimes it is exactly what creates curiosity and moves users toward the next action.
This concept came to me after a particularly inspiring trip. And I think it is the first mobile concept I have created purely for myself, rather than for a client project, in roughly three years.
So this one has a little more freedom, art direction, and product experimentation in it.
06/30 complete.
If you enjoy seeing mobile product experiments like this alongside the growth thinking behind them, follow along. And if this direction resonates, a reaction helps me understand which ideas are worth exploring deeper next.
#MobileAppDesign #TravelApp #TravelAppDesign #MobileUX #UXDesign #ProductDesign #GrowthDesign #TravelTech #InteractionDesign #UIDesign #ProductStrategy #MobileProduct #AsolDesign
Perfect
First contract on Contra finished!
How was it?
