Show HN: Ikuyo a Travel Planning Web Application

Nice app, nice idea you thought of.

What's your goal with the project?

I built a web app that looked very similar a few years back: friends & family collaboration on a trip plan, itinerary with map view, packing list, notes/journaling, favoriting, private or public with commenting, that sort of thing.

My thesis was that the current common method of trip planning in a shared doc was messy, and a more structured, guided approach would make the process easier for users. And being able to share/show trip plans with others who aren't on the trip would be something people would want to do.

My goal was to scale it and get actual broad adoption, make it a social experience, but even getting a handful of users was an uphill battle.

I found that my thesis was likely wrong for a couple of reasons:

1. The messy shared doc approach had the benefit of being very low-friction. It's easier to just type a bulleted list than to click "add item" and fill out some form fields.

2. Browser usage was (I think) a limiting factor. I'm not sure if it would have worked as a native mobile app, but it definitely wasn't going to work as a web app.

3. When people want to show off their trip or look for travel inspiration, they turn to apps like Instagram and Tiktok. They want visuals with photos/videos, not a list with a map. It's very difficult to create a new purpose-built social network.

I ended up winding it down and moving on.

I don't mean this to be a Dropbox "why are you building this" comment, but more hopefully pointing out a few challenges that exist in the space that you'll likely need to think about if you want to scale.

Several things, but wide adoption is NOT one of them.

First and foremost, it's for my own personal use. I like to organize things and I find that the messy doc/spreadsheet way is way too messy for my liking, especially when I find a need to coordinate plans with other friends overseas. That's why I started this.

Secondly, it's for fun and for learning. I enjoy build websites and explore what browser can provide. I learned that browser have API for drag-and-drop element to pass data to a target element

So at the end of the day, I see it as a fun side project and nothing more.

Thanks for sharing your experience too :)

Looks nice! Since it's MIT licensed and I'd assume free to use, I'd suggest including that in the landing page. Since the homepage didn't include the keywords "price", "pricing", "free" or "cost" (related to pricing) I unfortunately thought it'd have dark patterns where you start planning a trip and then at some point it'd ask for payment.

Thanks for your kind words! Yeah great suggestion, I'll add them soon :)