Orion
Creative Routing App
Overview
Orion is a creative routing app that reframes multi-stop outing planning as expressive, spontaneous quests. It blends maps, taste, and social identity into a single intuitive experience, designed to support creativity rather than suppress it.
Details
Role
Product & UX Designer
Timeline
Semester-long project
Medium
Mobile App Concept
Tools
Figma, Gemini 3
Team
Individual Project
Primary Interface
Problem
Young adults in New York City frequently plan multi-stop social outings, but their planning tools haven’t caught up; forced to use generic utility apps (Notes, Instagram/TikTok saves, Beli, Maps, etc.) creativity is stifled instead of supported.
With no medium for ideating coherent, personal and shareable outings, creating itineraries becomes fragmented and uninspired when it should feel expressive.
Solution
Orion is a tool for planning outings that facilitates creative expression while streamlining the planning process.
Key Features
Aura-Based Routing
Orion’s aura-based routing system offers a non-prescriptive way to guide users based on taste. As users complete quests, they develop an aura informed by where they’ve been and how they explore. This allows personalization to emerge organically over time.
Live View
Orion’s live view encourages spontaneity and going off-track while on an adventure. As the only navigation app to suggest not following its own directions, Orion supports exploration rather than strict efficiency.
Quests, Not Points
By framing plans as quests instead of checklists, Orion encourages big, multi-stop ideas and rejects the assumption that outings should resolve into a single destination.
Process
Research
To understand how young adults plan outings, I surveyed 20+ participants about planning habits, tools, and social coordination. Responses revealed that while outings are imagined creatively, planning tools often suppress that creativity.
Conceptual Framing
Rather than optimizing for efficiency, Orion reframes planning as expression. Outings are quests, routes are constellations, and navigation remains intentionally flexible.
Prototyping
Iteration focused on balancing clarity with openness. Early prototypes explored abstract and map-based models before converging on a hybrid system that supported both structure and spontaneity.
Linear, one-dimensional quest-building flow
A map-centric, two-dimensional framing
Final, reconfigurable, nonlinear framing
Takeaways
Systems Shape Behavior
Designing Orion showed that behavior is shaped more by systems and constraints than by individual features. Framing routing as an expressive system produced more meaningful outcomes than optimizing isolated interactions.
Framing as a Creative Tool
Treating planning as an act of expression changed how users imagined and engaged with outings. Language and structure mattered as much as interface mechanics.