UX / Interaction Design · 2025
Roamy.
Where are we roaming next?
A cultural discovery app connecting young Australian travellers with authentic, local-hosted experiences across Asia.
The Brief
Our studio brief was intentionally broad — design for a moment of transition. Among every direction we explored, travel stood out as the most personal and the most underserved.
As a team with backgrounds spanning Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, we had all experienced the gap between wanting a genuine cultural experience and ending up in a tourist trap. That shared frustration became the starting point.
The Team
Four of us, four roles, one project — each person owning a clear area while staying across everything else. We set our own timeline, ran our own meetings, and held each other accountable.
The Problem
58% of Australians aged 18 to 25 were planning overseas trips in 2024, with Asia-Pacific as their top destination.
They want something genuine — local food stalls, language lessons, real conversations. The tools to find those experiences just did not exist. Without them, people end up on the same guided bus tour as everyone else, and the local community sees little economic benefit from their visit.
"Young Australians seek authentic, culturally rich experiences, yet face barriers in awareness, planning, and cultural understanding. Without effective models, many are funnelled into tourist traps — leading to diluted experiences for them and missed economic opportunities for local communities."
The Solution
Roamy connects travellers directly with verified locals who host experiences. A Thai tea ceremony. A cooking class from someone's grandmother's kitchen. A street food walk through a neighbourhood no travel blog covers.
It creates genuine value on both sides — travellers get real cultural access, locals earn income and get recognised for sharing what they know best.
"It's not a booking platform. It's a system for building trust between two people who would never otherwise meet."
The Ad
Part of the brief was bringing Roamy to life beyond the prototype — so we produced a short video ad to capture what the experience actually feels like.
Key Features
How We Got There
Every design decision came from something we heard, observed, or tested — starting from a pantomime in a classroom and ending at a polished, animated prototype.
Testing Session Evidence
Lo-fi to Hi-fi
Key Insights from Testing
The Results
Recognition
Out of all the projects in our cohort, Roamy was selected for the University of Sydney graduation show — an evening where members of the public, industry guests, and academics came to see the year's best student work.
From the Grad Show
"Seeing strangers engage with something we built from a whiteboard sketch — watching them understand it, respond to it, want to use it — that was the moment it stopped feeling like a student project."
My Role
I was hands-on across the full project — from the first research conversations through to the final prototype screens in Figma.
Wireframing and prototyping in Figma — owned the product from low-fidelity sketches all the way through to the final interactive high-fidelity prototype across both traveller and host sides
Led ideation and UX research direction — shaped the problem framing, defined our user personas, and drove the research approach that grounded every design decision
Designed and ran usability testing — facilitated the pantomime scenario, analysed Likert-scale survey results, and synthesised findings into actionable iterations
Information architecture and interaction design — mapped the full user flow, defining how every screen connected and how the experience felt to move through
Contributed to visual and brand design — worked alongside Kittu on the UI system, component library, and visual consistency across all screens
