Leonardo MinettiProduct Designer
ENPT
Contact
Back to cases
4 min read

From data to decisions: rethinking exploration in iOverlander

iOverlander is a community-driven platform that helps travelers find and share places around the world. The product struggled with navigation, trust in content, and difficulty turning data into usable decisions.

In 30 seconds

  1. Problem

    The app held a wealth of user-generated data, but showed all of it with equal weight, so travelers struggled to find reliable places fast.

  2. What I did

    Redesigned the discovery experience: a clearer information hierarchy, cleaner map pins and simpler navigation between map and list.

  3. Result

    One continuous check-in form (down from 10+ screens) and faster decisions on the road, with clearer signals of quality and recency.

Overview

iOverlander is a community-driven travel platform used by overlanders to find campsites, services and points of interest worldwide. Its content is generated by the users themselves, and it is used mostly on mobile, often on the road.

Problem

The discovery paradox

iOverlander houses an incredible wealth of user-generated data, but the sheer volume had become a liability. The interface presented information equally, regardless of relevance, forcing users to sift through noise to find basic necessities while on the road.

  • Users struggled to find relevant places quickly.
  • Information was dense and hard to scan on mobile devices.
  • Lacked visual trust signals for recency and quality of reviews.
  • Navigation mismatch between map view and detailed list views.

Main menu of the app, annotated with the "consistency and standards" heuristic: every feature has the same presentation, even settings
Select Location screen of the app, annotated with three usability heuristics
New Place Criteria screen of the app, a long text page, annotated with three usability heuristics
Toilets step (14 of 18) of the flow to add a place, annotated with a usability heuristic
Place Details screen of the app, annotated with a usability heuristic
Initial Check-in view and the same page after scrolling to the end, annotated with the "visibility of system status" heuristic
1 / 6
Users weren’t struggling with lack of data, they were struggling to understand, trust, and act on it quickly.

Process

How the work got there

From hypotheses to wireframes: the research, definition and sketching behind the decisions.

Hypotheses

Taking stock of what I knew so far, I wrote down six hypotheses to guide the next step: the user interviews.

Six blue sticky notes with the initial hypotheses about how people use the iOverlander app

User interviews

Five interviews with overlanders, recruited on Instagram (mostly couples and people traveling by van, car or trailer) and held in a single week. The insights below are the pain points they reported.

Board of grey sticky notes with the insights from the interviews, and thumbnails of the video calls

How Might We

With the interview insights in hand, I ran a How Might We exercise split by the topics users brought up: place details, saving places, adding new places and the home page.

Board with four topics (place details screen, saving feature, new place addition, home page), each with blue How Might We notes

Brainstorming solutions

For each topic, a brainstorm of possible solutions. The ideas were left mixed on purpose, to make room for solutions that cross topics.

Board with the topics (saving places, adding new places, initial page, login, place details page), yellow How Might We notes and green solution ideas

MoSCoW prioritization

The ideas sorted into Must, Should, Can and Won't, to decide what would shape the start of the screen design.

MoSCoW board with the columns Must, Should, Can and Wont filled with green sticky notes

Personas

With a clear path on which solutions to test, I drew four personas from the interview cases to check whether I was missing any opportunity.

Four persona cards for overlanders, each with photo, vehicle, goals, challenges, lifestyle and needs

User flow: choosing where to stay

The flows were the exercise that helped me most: they showed how bad the current experience was. This one covers choosing a place to stay for the night.

Flow diagram titled Choose a place to stay at the same night

User flow: planning the trip

Three flows in total, all built on the interview insights, for example that not everyone plans places before hitting the road, as I had assumed.

Flow diagram titled Planning locals trip itinerary

User flow: adding a place

The flow that showed the biggest problem: an 18-page form, and having to be at the exact spot (or know its coordinates), literally stop users from adding places.

Flow diagram titled Adding a new place to the platform, ending in an 18-page form

Sketches before screens

With the problem defined, I picked up paper and pen to sketch an ideal redesign before opening Figma.

Hand-drawn sketches of the add-a-place flow: map, add a spot, rules to add, current location or choose on map, name, and a thank-you screen

Wireframes

The sketches guided the medium-fidelity wireframes, where I planned the layout and content structure around what users needed.

Mid-fidelity wireframes of the Overlander app on an orange background: map, place details, profile and the add-a-place form screens
1 / 11

Solution

Decisions and approach

Solution 1

Scannability over density

Restructured the place cards to highlight critical decision-making factors first: category icon, exact distance, and an aggregated sentiment score, pushing granular text reviews down the hierarchy.

Solution 2

Real behavior alignment

Designed primary user flows around immediate needs ("Find fuel near me now") rather than open-ended browsing, reducing time-to-action.

Solution 3

Trust through context

Introduced clear visual indicators for data freshness. A location verified yesterday visually outranks one untouched for three years, like it should be.

Solution 4

Simplifying check-in to a single flow

Reduced the check-in experience from a fragmented, multi-step flow (10+ screens) to a single, continuous form optimized for real-world usage. Users can now scan, answer, and complete the process in one pass, reducing friction in on-the-go scenarios.

Solution

A clearer way forward

The final design brings structural clarity to the overlanding experience. Cleaner map pins and distinct typography hierarchy turn data into actionable intelligence.

Redesigned discovery experience

Other cases

All cases