For The Plot

Our homepage

To watch our ad, please see here: https://youtu.be/TVykqhdQrUI

Inspiration

Planning trips with friends can be chaotic. During our grad trip planning, we faced scheduling conflicts, conflicting accessibility needs and different personal preferences.

We realised there was no simple tool to coordinate all of this, so we built For the Plot: a web app that makes group trip planning easier, collaborative, and stress-free.

What it does

For the Plot is a user-friendly web app that combines your group’s:

📅 Availabilities
💵Budgets
⛷️Preferred activities
🏨Accommodation preferences
♿Accessibility and dietary requirements

It generates 3 tailored holiday options with sample itineraries, flights, and recommendations. Everyone can vote for their favourite, ensuring the final trip hears all your voices. The app also handles all logistics, including individual airport and transfer connections, to find the most budget-friendly, eco-friendly, and time-efficient option for everyone.

Whether you want a relaxing getaway, a city adventure, or an action-packed trip, we’ve got you covered… and yes, there’s even an emergency Aperol button to locate the nearest Aperol-serving spot! 🍹

How we built it

We have implemented the idea as a web app built with a React frontend and a Supabase (managed PostgreSQL) database backend. The frontend uses Tailwind CSS for styling. LangChain + the OpenAI API (gpt-4o-mini) are used for trip planning, SerpApi is used for live flight data and Twilio for WhatsApp reminders.

Challenges we ran into

Logo Design: Finding a logo that accurately conveyed the purpose and spirit of our app was more challenging than expected. We spent more time on this than we probably should have, but we've ended up with one we're really proud of! Colour Scheme: Selecting a colour palette that would appeal to our target audience while remaining visually cohesive took careful consideration. Code & Development: Integrating features like collaborative itinerary editing/voting pushed our concurrency skills and required a LOT of debugging.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A strong business model canvas that sets us up for the next phase!
A complete pitch deck, logo, colour scheme and pitch video
A UX that we spent a lot of time designing / procrastinating tinkering with
Great team morale and snack supplies!
Bella put the team first, rescheduling a London trip to support collective goals.
Janice got her 8 hours of sleep, enjoyed a birthday party, and still contributed.
Lara shone at her dance performance, showing dedication both on and off the stage.
Anna achieved her best rest this semester, recharging for the challenges ahead!

What we learned

Success comes from everyone supporting each other and going to watch each other at dance shows
Balance boosts performance, as does 2 litres of caffeine
User experience matters. Being told our app looked like an ad for a space station helped us pivot direction.
Adaptability is key: we changed what we had planned many, many, times, but we still managed to submit!

What's next for For The Plot

We will be planning a holiday - and so should you! To bring your plot to the next level, we are focusing on creating smarter and more collaborative travel planning.
Our first priority is growing an active community through social media, university networks, and travel communities. To encourage repeat use for group trips, we will also introduce collated memory books from individually uploaded photos, helping users capture and share their experiences.
We aim to implement features to make planning more seamless and personalised. Including suggestions tailored to user preferences and past itineraries, collaborative itinerary editing and feedback integration to improve UX.
As the platform grows, we will introduce affiliate revenues and premium planning services, offering enhanced experiences and tailored travel solutions for users seeking the next level of convenience.