CityCurious
A mobile app delivering real-time, history-rich notifications tailored to your interests.
About the project
CityCurios is a personal project designed to make exploring new cities effortless and fun. Using location access, it sends travelers real-time informations about hidden gems, fascinating stories, and local history as they pass by.
Product Designer: Camilla Almeida
Year: 2024 - present.
Background
Exploring a new city often means juggling multiple apps, guides, and blogs to uncover its history and hidden stories. Travelers either invest hours researching beforehand or risk missing out on meaningful cultural insights during their trip. CityCurios was created to bridge this gap
CityCurios was created to bridge this gap by delivering contextual and engaging facts about the city in real time, directly tied to the traveler’s location. Instead of manually searching, users receive contextual stories directly as they explore. To power this experience, CityCurios will use AI as a dynamic database, automatically organizing and serving relevant facts for each city, transforming urban exploration into a more spontaneous, educational, and enjoyable journey.
The challenge
Most travel apps focus either on logistics like maps, accommodations, or transportation or on curated tourist guides that require planning ahead. While these tools are useful, they don’t adapt to the spontaneous way many people explore a city. Travelers often face two problems: fragmented information spread across multiple platforms, and a lack of engaging, contextual insights during the actual experience of walking through a place.
The challenge for CityCurios is to design an app that:
The challenge for CityCurios is to design an app that:
- Surfaces relevant facts at the right time and place, without overwhelming users.
- Balances educational value with casual exploration, making cultural and historical knowledge accessible to all.
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Integrates seamlessly into a traveler’s journey, acting as a companion rather than another source of digital distraction.
Although I will not be using the Design Sprint methodology for this project, I chose to reframe the challenge using the “How Might We” approach. This allows me to better articulate the challenge as a question, spark creative thinking, and gain a fresh perspective on CityCurious.
User research
🧑🤝🧑 14 participants
📊 Quantitative research
💬 Survey on Google Forms shared on WhatsApp groups and friends who travel.
I conducted a brief quantitative research survey with 14 participants to better understand travelers’ behaviors, preferences, and motivations. The questionnaire was shared within WhatsApp groups and with friends who frequently travel. The quantitative research provided valuable insights into how travelers engage with new cities and what influences their curiosity when exploring.
- Identify how travelers research destinations and what sources they trust.
- Understand the type of information users value most while exploring new cities.
- Validate the interest in a travel app that provides real-time notifications about historical or fun facts.
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Design a seamless user experience that integrates this information into their journey.
Key findings based on survey results:
- Travel frequency: 71% travel for leisure 2–3 times a year.
- Pre-travel research: 64% always research destinations before traveling, and 28% often do.
- Research sources: Social media (79%), travel websites (57%), and friends/family (57%) are the most used.
- Information sought: Local attractions (93%), restaurants and food (86%), and historical facts (79%).
- Importance of history: 93% consider historical facts moderately to extremely important when visiting a new city.
- Device usage: 100% rely primarily on smartphones while traveling.
- Interest in app: 71% said they would use an app that provides notifications about historical/fun facts.
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Desired features: Interactive maps (93%), suggested itineraries (100%), and user reviews/ratings (86%).
Insights
- Travelers want practical and cultural context, not just logistical information.
- Smartphones are the primary travel companion, making them the ideal medium.
- Users are open to notifications, but they should remain lightweight and non-intrusive.
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There’s strong interest in interactive maps and curated itineraries, suggesting opportunities to go beyond simple notifications.
User personas
To better understand the potential users of CityCurios, I created personas based on survey results and research insights. These personas represent distinct traveler types and their motivations, frustrations, and needs.User Flow
For the MVP, I will first focus on addressing the needs of the persona Anna Müller. In future iterations, I plan to expand the app to also support the needs of the persona David Johnson. The core user flow is designed to stay simple yet engaging, built around the following key features:- Onboarding – Select interests (history, food, hidden gems).
- Explore city – Access interactive map
- Live exploration – Receive contextual notifications while walking around.
- Save favorites – Bookmark interesting spots or facts for later.
- Review & share – Access trip highlights and share experiences.
Prototype
I used Figma to design high-fidelity screens, including the onboarding flow and core features such as the home screen with a map highlighting locations to explore, and a detailed screen for each historical place, featuring descriptions and user reviews.
Success Metrics (Next Steps)
Since CityCurios is still a work in progress, the next steps involve adding additional features to the Figma prototype and conducting user testing with participants from the initial research. Additionally, I defined a set of KPIs to guide how success will be measured once the app is tested and released. These metrics connect directly to the project goals and will help validate whether the design is creating real value for travelers.
- Engagement: Story interaction rate (notifications opened vs. ignored) and average stories viewed per session.
- Retention: Returning users within 7 and 30 days, session frequency, and time spent exploring.
- User Satisfaction: Net Promoter Score (NPS), App Store ratings, and qualitative feedback.
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Efficiency: Reduced need for switching between multiple apps, measured through surveys and in-app feedback.
These KPIs will serve as a foundation for iteration, helping ensure CityCurios grows into a product that’s not only engaging but also genuinely useful for travelers.