Journey

Inspiration

Imagine trying to travel in the post-COVID era. Do I need to be vaccinated? Is quarantine mandatory? What restrictions will I face? In a world still recovering from COVID, not only has travel been complicated with a myriad of COVID-related restrictions, but these policies also vary by country and are constantly changing. Not only that, but government websites–the current repository for information–are poorly organized and difficult to use.

What it does

Meet Journey, an app that seeks to present all the information you need to travel in the post-COVID era. We provide a clear break-down of COVID-19 restrictions and visa requirements, as well as the ability to keep track of them through a checklist. Users will be able to find and schedule COVID tests and embassy appointments, and even ask questions to employees themselves.

How we built it

In order to do this, we created three main sections. First, we wanted to be able to filter countries by travel restrictions according to the user’s passport and vaccination status. That is why first, we have an onboarding process that allows users to input their information so that the restriction information is as accurate to them as possible. Suppose our user Amy is using this app for the first time. Amy would be able to input her nationalities, in this case American and Canadian, and then afterwards upload her vaccine data. After that, Amy can continue to the app, where she can browse the countries she wants to travel to and check the COVID and visa requirements for her specific nationality.

Second, to help users keep track of what requirements they need to fulfill, we have a “my trips” section where users can save their trips and access their checklists. Now, let’s say Amy has spent some time on this app and wants to create a trip to China. There are two ways to do so, through searching for China on the homepage, viewing China’s travel restrictions, and then saving the country as a trip, or through creating trips in the “my trips” section. Once a trip is created, the app generates the relevant checklist of requirements Amy needs to make the trip possible. If Amy is traveling with people, she can add them to generate a checklist that is more relevant to them.

Third, within the checklists, users will be able to directly contact and set up important appointments, like with the embassy to fulfill your visa requirements, or with places that have COVID testing to fulfill COVID-testing requirements. Say Amy’s checklist for her trip tells her she needs to set up an embassy appointment. She can directly schedule an appointment with the closest embassy at the best available time for her, and can do the same with any COVID testing requirements. This way, Amy no longer needs to be confused trying to navigate embassy sites, as the most important aspects of the trip-making process is centralized to the app. For the purpose of making embassy appointments and having updated travel restriction data, we would communicate with government agencies directly to make this possible.

Ultimate Goals

We are seeking to provide a public service. Web scraping information from official government websites would be much easier than working with the governments themselves. However, our vision is to unify all countries in the post-COVID era and replace the cumbersome government websites with our app. We are not seeking to make profit, but instead wish that in an ideal world, Journey could bring all bureaucracies together and create a shared service for everyone.

What's next for Journey

In later iterations of our app, the user would be able to directly ask questions and communicate with embassy staff to resolve miscommunication.

Built With

• canva
• figma