An experiential tourism platform that transforms Chandigarh's hidden places into curated journeys, combining discovery, personalized itineraries and memory-making into one cohesive experience.
“Some journeys become memories only when we choose to remember them.”
The Hidden Polaroid
Experience Design
UX/UI Designer
10 Weeks
Permanent Collection
An exploration of Chandigarh beyond its familiar landmarks, where discovery becomes a personal collection of places, stories, and moments.
UX / SERVICE DESIGN · 2024
A travel experience designed around discovering what conventional tourism tends to overlook — and preserving what travellers experience along the way.
THE STARTING POINT
The Hidden Polaroid explores how overlooked places can become meaningful travel experiences.
The project looks beyond conventional tourist destinations to understand how people might discover Chandigarh through places that are often missed.
THE INITIAL OBSERVATION
Tourists often have to navigate multiple sources while planning a trip — destinations, accommodation, transportation, activities, reviews, budgets and itineraries.
At the same time, the experience does not necessarily end when the trip ends. Photographs, videos, souvenirs, journals and stories become the ways people reconstruct the experience afterwards.
Hidden Polaroid began by looking at these two moments together: planning the journey and preserving the journey.
Lesser-known cultural, architectural and everyday destinations are often harder to discover than conventional tourist attractions.
Trip planning requires people to combine information from several online and offline sources.
Existing itinerary tools do not always capture the nuances of intent, context, flexibility and personal interests.
Trip memories are usually scattered across photographs, videos, social platforms and physical keepsakes.
RESEARCH PLAN
The research explored tourism behaviour, trip planning, travel preferences, information sources, online travel platforms, AI itinerary planners and the ways people recall their trips.
Tourism behaviour, traveller types, tourist motives, Indian travel culture, trip types, planning factors, travel platforms, AI planners and memory recall.
A survey involving 90 respondents was used to understand travel frequency, transport preferences, travel types, online usage, accommodation considerations and cultural interests.
Interviews explored how different age groups actually plan, experience and remember their trips.
Existing online travel platforms and AI trip planners were examined to understand their offerings, technology, pricing, service and UX.
WHAT THE RESEARCH REVEALED
22 · Gen-Z Traveller
A student who travels with friends, prefers spontaneous decisions and wants to immerse herself in local culture.
45 · Middle-aged Traveller
A father who plans family vacations carefully and relies on online information to keep the trip organised and predictable.
Shrishti prefers spontaneous, on-the-spot decisions, while Manish prefers a clear itinerary and advance planning. Yet both value cultural experiences, reliable information and memories of their trips.
FROM RAW RESEARCH TO OPPORTUNITY
Travellers combine booking platforms, blogs, social media, recommendations, guidebooks and travel agents.
A traveller's interest is not simply a category. Context, companions, budget, time and motivation influence the trip.
Some travellers want structure while others deliberately leave room for spontaneous discovery.
Simply listing lesser-known destinations is not enough. People need information, history, directions and context to understand them.
Photos and videos exist, but the experience of revisiting them is usually disconnected from the journey that created them.
Existing AI trip planners can personalise recommendations but may struggle with context, intent, flexibility, hidden gems and exceptions.
EXPLORATION
The ideation phase explored individual problems across travel planning, discovery, budgeting, food, accommodation and memory preservation before converging on a more complete service.
A platform providing information, history and directions to overlooked destinations.
A personalised interactive record of the trip that can be revisited after the journey.
HIDDEN POLAROID
Hidden Polaroid is a Chandigarh-based pilot service that combines hidden-gem tour packages, personalised itinerary generation, registered tour guides and an interactive memory experience.
Explore hidden gems across architecture, nature, art, handloom, sculpture and other cultural categories.
Generate personalised itineraries based on interests, duration, companions and additional instructions.
Connect with tour guides and experience hidden gems with additional cultural context.
Turn trip photographs into an interactive, personalised memory flip book.
Hidden places become more meaningful through local knowledge, while the memories created along the way become part of the destination's living archive.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
The experience brings place discovery, personalised itinerary generation, contextual exploration and memory preservation together into a single journey.
Find lesser-known destinations through cultural categories, contextual information and local knowledge.
Build a trip around interests, duration, companions, budget and personal instructions.
Travel through curated packages, active trip information and optional local guide support.
Transform photographs and moments from the journey into a personalised memory artefact.
BEYOND THE INTERFACE
The experience depends on interactions between travellers, technology, guides, tourism infrastructure and supporting partners.
Plans → discovers → books → travels → captures → remembers
Website · App · Itinerary · Tour Guide · Hidden Gems · Flip Book
AI itinerary generation · partner stays · guide assignment · memory generation
SEO · Chandigarh tourism · transportation · guides · cloud photography · partnerships
Travel enthusiasts interested in Chandigarh's hidden gems.
Tour packages, memory flip books and partnerships with stays.
Stay providers, restaurants and tour guides.
Website and mobile application.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE
The interface brings discovery, itinerary planning and memory-making into a cohesive experience designed around exploration rather than navigation alone.
FROM STRUCTURE TO INTERFACE
The visual system used a warm orange, deep navy and muted beige palette, supported by a polaroid-inspired image treatment and a structured travel interface.
Rather than treating photographs as ordinary content cards, the project used the physical language of photographs and polaroids to reinforce discovery, collecting and remembering.
THE EXPERIENCE AFTER THE EXPERIENCE
The Polaroid memory feature transforms exploration into something personal and tangible.
Travellers can preserve moments from their journey as visual keepsakes rather than simply completing a list of destinations.
THE SECOND HALF OF THE JOURNEY
The Memory Flip Book was designed as a way to transform scattered trip photographs into a personal, interactive artefact.
Link the cloud folder containing photographs from the trip.
Choose the desired theme and settings for the memory experience.
AI selects photographs according to the chosen theme.
Remove or replace photographs manually before finalising the book.
Export the finished memory or preserve it within Hidden Polaroid.
“A trip becomes more than a destination when you have something to return to.”
USABILITY TESTING
Navigation is easy.
The polaroid concept was liked.
Colors were considered suitable.
No major readability issues.
The Flip Book idea was well received.
The app felt soothing and clean.
Step-by-step revelation helped.
Some screens contained too much text.
FROM TESTING TO IMPROVEMENT
Testing identified inconsistencies in menu placement across screens.
→ Refined navigation systemMinor font-size issues were identified during testing.
→ Improved hierarchy and readabilitySome app screens contained too much information.
→ More structured step-by-step disclosureThe improved interface made actions and progression more explicit.
→ Clearer interaction cuesThe improved UI retained the strongest parts of the concept — polaroid imagery, hidden-gem discovery, structured itineraries and the Memory Flip Book — while improving hierarchy and flow.
LOOKING BACK
Hidden Polaroid began as an exploration of tourism and gradually became a much larger exercise in understanding behaviour, service ecosystems and the relationship between experience and memory.
Managing a long-form thesis required balancing research, project planning and execution over an extended period.
The project strengthened my understanding of UI design and translating research into a complete digital experience.
Tourism was a relatively new domain, which made the research and synthesis process an important part of the learning experience.
The pilot is currently centred on Chandigarh, with the possibility of expanding the hidden-gem model to other states.
Hidden Polaroid could eventually expand beyond Chandigarh, using the same model to uncover and promote lesser-known destinations elsewhere.
Hidden Gems, Just A Click Away!
Akira
2024
Blender • Figma • UX/UI Design • Experience Design
ARCHIVED
"Some places are hidden not by distance, but by attention."