Whimsy
Your AI-based Personal Travel Assistant for Rural & Ecotourism
🏆 Designed for the UXCEL Design Challenge — Ranked #6 Globally.
Whimsy is a concept platform that helps travelers plan immersive, sustainable rural trips through AI-powered itineraries, cultural prompts, and community stories.
Problem Statement
Rural and ecotourism travelers often struggle with three things:
Lack of personalization — existing travel platforms focus on mainstream trips and don’t adapt to eco-travel preferences or rural contexts.
Shallow cultural discovery — local life is shown as a “point of interest,” not a lived experience.
Fragmented planning — travelers bounce between blogs, maps, and social media to stitch a meaningful route together.
Result: rural travel stays hard to plan, culturally surface-level, and dependent on luck rather than guidance.
Proposed Solution
Whimsy reimagines rural travel as a guided, community-supported journey:
AI itineraries that adapt to traveler intent, pace, and eco-values.
Cultural immersion moments (phrases, etiquette, local context) embedded inside the trip.
Storybook feed where locals and travelers share authentic experiences.
Like-minded travel matching to support safer, more social rural exploration.
Trip readiness clarity (difficulty, network strength, route map) before committing.
Goal: make rural travel confident, contextual, and human-first.
Literature Highlights (condensed)
Research consistently points to these needs:
AI can reduce travel anxiety by supporting navigation, translation, and personalized suggestions in unfamiliar environments.
Rural tourism thrives on authenticity — travelers seek participation in local life, not packaged attractions.
Sustainable travel requires context — users need ethical guidance and community-based options.
User-generated stories build trust far better than commercial listings.
Key Insight
To design for rural/ecotourism, the product must support context + confidence + cultural depth, not just booking.
Affinity Diagram
Personalization & Context Awareness
Current platforms don’t understand eco-travel motives deeply enough to tailor meaningful rural itineraries.Authentic Cultural Engagement
Local communities are often reduced to visuals. Travelers need guided cultural entry points.Seamless Planning Journey
Planning is scattered across tools. Users want one flow from discovery → itinerary → readiness.
Research & Synthesis
To ground Whimsy in reality, I studied key industry players and their user experience gaps.
Key Features
Smart Itinerary Planner
Generates personalized rural/ecotour plans based on travel style, pace, interests, and sustainability preferences — then adapts as the trip evolves.
Storybook Community Feed
A discovery layer powered by authentic local stories and traveler reflections, helping users explore places through lived experiences, not ads.
Culture & Language Buddy
Learn useful phrases, etiquette, and local context right when you need it — during planning and on the trip.
Local Community Experiences
Find village stays, eco-activities, and community-run experiences that support locals and feel authentic.
Whimsy Chat Assistant
A friendly AI companion that helps travelers in the moment — translating phrases, explaining local customs, and suggesting cultural events.
Local Community Experiences
Find village stays, eco-activities, and community-run experiences that support locals and feel authentic.
Reflection
Designing Whimsy taught me that rural and eco-travel isn’t just a logistics problem — it’s a confidence + context problem. The biggest shift was moving from “help users plan faster” to “help users feel connected and prepared.” By blending AI itineraries with community stories and cultural prompts, the experience stays practical without losing the human side of travel. If I extend this further, I’d validate the concept with real rural travelers and hosts to fine-tune trust, safety signals, and offline-first behavior.
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Let’s Build What Lasts.
I collaborate with founders, teams, and dreamers who care about clarity, craft, and lasting impact.
If you’re shaping what’s next — let’s talk.
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Rhitik