Raising awareness about tourism-related social issues through inspiring travel stories
Client
Zibarna Inc.
Date
Sept 2020 – March 2021
Services
UX/UI Design, Development

Context
Traveling is one of the best ways to learn about the world. Throughout the travels of Zibarna-founder Eduardo Rios Lasso, he encountered many tourism-related issues affecting societies worldwide, including environmental problems, drugs, scams and human trafficking. His personal experiences led to the creation of Zibarna.
Challenge
Creating an online platform that informs and encourages people, especially young travelers, to travel more safely, enjoyably and most importantly, be more aware of the social issues closely related to the tourism industry. The platform should provide space for stories, selling books and other travel products.
Discover
At the start of any great project is truly understanding your client and their audience, for which I use my in-house Product Experience Strategy. Over multiple Zoom-sessions and Google Docs, I got to know Zibarna and it’s founder. Knowing their brand values, and establishing their main goals in business.
Define
The next step in the process is knowing who your audience is, and defining the goals they are trying to accomplish. For Zibarna, this meant designing for travellers (17-35), brand managers as well as book publishers. Each of these goals can be broken down into individual objectives. It’s up to us to decide how we can best provide support in the form of design.
Wireframing
Utilizing the Product Experience Strategy, the individual components we can use to support the visitor are gathered into a wireframe. Here, the entire site comes together by answering questions like:
What is the most logical position for each section?
How do people navigate there with the least amount of effort?

Development
The final Zibarna platform was developed using WordPress, tailored to their needs – fully responsive and matching their brand. It provides space for inspiring stories from both Zibarna Editors, as well as fostering community discussion in the form of blog reactions.
To complement the color palette, serif typography and photo- and videography, I teamed up with Javasloth Studio to create unique hand-drawn icons.
