1. Define the product
I identified the core traveller problems, decided what MestoGo should stand for, prioritised an initial destination model, and kept the feature set tied to real travel jobs rather than generic travel content.
Making travel decisions feel less uncertain.
MestoGo is a country-aware travel companion for the practical moments around a trip: what to prepare, how to arrive, where to find live flight context, and how to get around with more confidence.
I conceived the product, shaped the strategy and experience, and built the live app and web presence end to end.
Role
Founder, product designer & engineer
Platforms
iOS, Android & web
Current destinations
Thailand, Malaysia & Nepal
The opportunity
Travel information is abundant. Reliable next steps are not.
A traveller may need entry guidance, an arrival form, airport information, a flight update, a fair taxi price, an eSIM, or emergency context—often while moving, in an unfamiliar place, and with limited time. The answer is usually scattered across government sites, booking services, maps, blogs, and group chats.
The central product question for MestoGo was not “how do we make a bigger travel guide?” It was: how do we help someone take the right next action at a moment of uncertainty?
That framing set the bar for each feature. It needed to be useful in a specific travel moment, clear about what it could and could not do, and local enough to earn a place on a traveller’s phone.
My responsibility
I owned the full product loop—from the original thesis to the live release.
2. Design the system
I designed the information architecture, country switching, mobile patterns, visual language, content hierarchy, app-store presentation, and the web surfaces that explain the product.
3. Build the experience
I translated the product into a working cross-platform application, including the flows, navigation, data-driven country content, and supporting web product needed to make it usable outside a prototype.
4. Operate and improve it
I treated the launch as the beginning: maintaining information, releasing improvements, evolving the destination coverage, and learning which areas deserve more depth.
Product approach
Organise the app around the traveller’s journey—not the company’s feature list.
The home dashboard gives each destination a familiar starting point. From there, the product groups help into a handful of understandable travel moments: preparation, arrival, in-transit decisions, and daily life on the ground.
Prepare
Entry and arrival readiness
Visa information, arrival-card guidance, and clear paths to official processes help users prepare before travel becomes time-critical.
Move
Flight and airport context
Airport cards, flight status, tracking, schedules, and fare discovery make the often-fragmented in-transit experience more actionable.
Navigate locally
Essential decisions on the ground
Transport, connectivity, weather, local essentials, safety, and things to do meet people after they have left the airport—not only before departure.
Communicate & adapt
Personal help for a specific trip
Smart translation and trip-aware checklists turn an immediate question or a personal plan into something a traveller can use right away.
Screen 01 · Discover
A destination dashboard that makes the product’s breadth understandable.
MestoGo could easily have become a wall of links. The dashboard resolves that by making the most common practical categories visible at a glance—from visas and flights to WiFi, public transport, translation, and arrival cards—while keeping the experience anchored to the selected country.
This structure gives the product room to grow without making users learn a new mental model for every destination.
Screen 02 · Move
Bring live flight decisions closer to the trip.
A flight is not one task. Travellers may be checking airport context, comparing tickets, looking for a cheaper date, tracking a specific route, or confirming a schedule. MestoGo brings these needs into one clearly labelled flight surface instead of expecting people to restart their search in different services.
The screen also demonstrates a key design choice: lead with familiar airports and plain-language actions, then provide deeper utility when the traveller needs it.
Screen 03 · Prepare
High-stakes information needs context, not just a link.
Digital arrival cards are a good example of the product’s role. A traveller needs to understand what the process is, whether it applies to them, what it costs, what to prepare, and where to go next. The TDAC guide turns a government process into a readable, step-by-step decision surface while preserving a clear hand-off to the official application route.
This is where information design and product trust meet: no unnecessary alarm, no vague promises, and no forcing the user to decode the process alone.
Screen 04 · Price a ride
Turn a negotiation into a more informed decision.
The fare calculator is a deliberately local feature: a traveller enters a route, sees the distance and travel-time context, gets an estimated traditional tuk-tuk range, and can compare it with app-based options. It gives people useful reference points before they agree to a ride—without pretending that a local street fare is fixed.
That distinction matters. The tool frames its estimate as a range, explains why negotiation still matters, and shows the trade-offs of nearby alternatives such as Grab and Bolt. It is a small interaction with a very practical outcome: more confidence at the exact moment a tourist is likely to need it.
Screen 05 · Communicate
Translation designed for a travel moment, not a blank utility.
Smart Translation gives a traveller a focused way to turn a real-world request into the local language. The interface keeps the original phrase and translated response together, then makes the result easy to copy, share, or expand when the conversation needs more context.
The example is intentionally everyday: asking for a fare to the Grand Palace. This is the product principle in miniature—use AI where it shortens the gap between uncertainty and a useful next action.
Screen 06 · Prepare personally
Make the checklist aware of the trip—not just the category.
A generic packing list is easy to find. MestoGo’s Smart Checklist Creator starts with the traveller’s trip context—such as their location, destination, dates, and needs—then turns a natural-language request into a checklist they can edit and use.
In this example, a family planning an island-hopping trip in Pattaya receives practical items such as sunscreen, a waterproof bag, child-friendly medicine, and a stroller. The result is not a one-shot AI response; it becomes a working travel list with individual items that can be checked, changed, deleted, or expanded.
Building for expansion
The hard part was making a local product feel repeatable without making every country feel the same.
A consistent shell
Shared categories, navigation patterns, and visual conventions help a returning user understand a new destination quickly.
Country-specific substance
Each market has its own entry requirements, airports, transport norms, local services, and essential information. The content and tools have to respect that reality.
A maintainable product model
The product needed a structure that made regional expansion possible without duplicating the entire experience or turning updates into a fragile manual process.
What this proves
MestoGo is more than a UI exercise.
It is evidence that I can hold a product from first principle through a public release: identify an opportunity, set a direction, make difficult scope decisions, design a coherent system, write and structure content, build the software, and keep improving it after people can use it.
It also shows the kind of work I enjoy most: taking a fuzzy, high-friction real-world problem and turning it into something people can understand and act on. The product is live, public, and still evolving—exactly the kind of accountability a portfolio case study should make visible.