My Praia Beach App

OVERVIEW

I designed My Praia (praia means beach in Portuguese), a concept app that helps travelers find the right beach in southern Portugal. Instead of showing endless data and weather stats, it focuses on the feeling and experience you want. After multiple rounds of research and user testing, it became clear that people cared less about filters and more about choosing an experience that matched their expectations.

TIMELINE

3 WEEKS

ROLE

PRODUCT DESIGNER

PROJECT TYPE

UX RESEARCH & MOBILE APP DESIGN

About the project

Picking the right beach can be tough

Let’s be honest, even with apps and guides, choosing a beach can be frustrating. Every resource lists a ton of stats, but none of that helps you decide if it is the right vibe for you. Locals know the difference between a family beach, a surf spot, or a quiet cove, but tourists rarely do. That gap between data and experience became my starting point.

TYPICAL BEACH APPS ARE DATA HEAVY AND CLUTTERED

PICKING A BEACH SHOULD NOT BE A BUMMER

Focusing on experiences, not stats

The solution was to rethink beach discovery around how people want to feel, not how much data they can parse. My Praia helps travelers choose beaches based on mood and expectations, giving them a simple, human way to match with the right spot. The interface stays bright and calm, making the experience feel more like inspiration than research.

PICK A VIBE, FIND A BEACH

DETAILS AND DIRECTIONS

IMAGERY ROOTED IN HISTORY AND PLACE

ALWAYS PUTTING THE USER EXPERIENCE FIRST

My Process

My design thinking

Before designing anything, I wanted to understand why choosing a beach felt so confusing. The problem wasn’t a lack of information but a lack of context. Travelers didn’t need more data. They needed a simple way to find a beach that matched the experience they were hoping for. With that insight, I moved from research to concept development, prototyping, and refinement, shaping My Praia around how people actually choose where to spend their day.

Start with the real problem

I spent time in southern Portugal and felt the same frustration most travelers do: endless beaches, endless data, and no way to know which one fit the vibe I wanted. That experience became my research starting point. The problem wasn’t navigation. It was expectation setting. People wanted confidence that the beach they were heading to would feel right for them.

Start with the real problem

Start with the real problem

Challenges and what actually worked

Because My Praia was a concept app, the quiz logic and recommendation system were entirely theoretical. I hadn’t validated the questions with real user research or modeled how the matching algorithm should actually behave in the wild.

What did work was the clarity of the overall experience. Through testing, users consistently responded to the simpler CTAs and the small pop-ups that explained how matches were generated. Those updates made the app feel more transparent and trustworthy, and they helped people move through the experience with confidence.