Case Study:
Arta - The Travel Companion
Role: Founder & Product Designer
Company: Arta (concpet/mvp); Master’s Degree project Maryland Institute, College of Art
Team: Individual (research, product strategy, UX, prototyping)
Duration: 12 weeks
Background
Family road trips are growing in popularity, but the experience inside the car has not evolved at the same pace. Parents juggle logistics, navigation, entertainment, and decision-making, while children often disengage during long stretches of travel.
Drawing on my background in UX, systems design, and emerging technologies, I created ARTA—an AI- and AR-powered travel assistant designed to reduce planning friction, improve discovery, and transform road trips into shared, engaging experiences across mobile devices, car displays, and AR interfaces.
ARTA was conceived as both a consumer experience platform and a scalable product ecosystem, integrating travel planning, contextual recommendations, edutainment, and personalized content delivery.
The Problem
Families on road trips struggle to coordinate logistics, make group decisions, and keep children meaningfully engaged throughout the journey. Existing travel and navigation tools focus on routes and destinations, but fail to support the in-between moments where stress, boredom, and missed opportunities accumulate.
How might we design a contextual, adaptive travel experience that reduces planning burden, supports collaborative decision-making, and turns travel time into engaging, educational moments for the entire family?
The Process
I approached ARTA as a product discovery and systems design challenge—balancing user needs, technical feasibility, and long-term scalability.
Research & Insight Development
- Conducted interviews with parents and families focused on road-trip behavior, pain points, and engagement patterns
- Identified recurring challenges around decision fatigue, fragmented tools, and disengaged children
- Framed ARTA around contextual assistance rather than static planning
Product & Experience Definition
- Designed a multi-surface experience supporting mobile devices, in-car displays, and AR glasses
- Defined core capabilities: route-aware recommendations, family profiles, age-appropriate edutainment, and shared vs. personal content delivery
- Established content hierarchies to prioritize safety, relevance, and engagemen
Prototyping & Validation
- Built low- and mid-fidelity prototypes to test planning flows, content relevance, and in-trip interactions
- Iterated based on usability feedback to reduce cognitive load and surface information only when it mattered
Results & Learnings
ARTA resulted in a validated product concept and MVP-ready experience framework designed for scalability across platforms and use cases.
Key outcomes include:
A clear product vision grounded in real family travel behavior
An atomic, responsive UX system capable of supporting personalization and contextual content
A differentiated positioning at the intersection of AI, AR, and travel experience design
ARTA demonstrates how emerging technologies can be applied thoughtfully—not as novelty, but as a means to reduce friction, increase connection, and create shared value during everyday experiences like family road trips.