EnVibe is a social media travel platform where users share and access travel itineraries. The idea was clear: give travelers a space to connect, inspire each other, and collaborate on trip planning. But before designing anything, the team needed to understand who they were building for, what existing platforms were getting right (and wrong), and where the real friction in travel planning lives.

The founders had a strong vision but no validated research to back it up. No user data, no competitive mapping, no defined personas. The product concept existed, but the decisions ahead (features, priorities, information architecture) all depended on research that hadn't been done yet.

I started with a competitive analysis, mapping existing platforms in the travel and social space to identify gaps, overlapping features, and positioning opportunities. This gave a clear picture of where EnVibe could differentiate.

From there, I moved into user research: interviews and surveys targeting frequent travelers to understand their planning habits, pain points, and what they actually want from a travel community. The goal was to separate assumptions from real behavior.

The research data fed into persona development. I built detailed user personas grounded in the interview findings, each representing a distinct traveler archetype with different motivations, frustrations, and platform expectations.

Finally, I synthesized everything into a findings report: key insights, behavioral patterns, and actionable recommendations that would inform the product's feature set, content strategy, and UX direction.

The deliverables covered the full research arc: competitive landscape analysis, interview and survey synthesis, 3 research-backed personas, and a prioritized findings document. The research gave the team a validated foundation to move into design with confidence instead of guesswork.

This project was pure research, no screens, no UI. The value was in giving the product team clarity on who they're building for and why, before a single pixel was placed. Every design decision that follows has something concrete to point back to.