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App redesign increases dwell time 30%

Redesigned a dated travel app into a modern, media-rich experience that increased engagement, improved navigation, and added business value for partners.

2024-2025

Driftscape

Driftscape is a Canadian travel-tech startup offering a content-rich exploration app for cities, cultural institutions, and tourism organizations.

UX & Product Design
Mobile Experience
Onboarding & Engagement

Outcome

Redesigned a dated travel app into a modern, media-rich experience that increased engagement, improved navigation, and added business value for partners.

Why It Mattered

The UI felt dated, content was buried, and first-time users dropped off. It didn’t reflect the brand’s promise of discovery or the expectations of modern users.

Results

  • 50% increase in interaction with points of interest in testing

  • 30% increase in dwell time vs. baseline

  • Referenced by partners as value-add for new campaigns

  • Improved feature comprehension without external help

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What I Lead

​As Director, Marketing & CX:

  • Owned full UX strategy, design, and feature prioritization

  • Led prototyping and user testing in Figma

  • Aligned stakeholders including dev, sales, and product

  • Built and validated scalable UI system across app screens

How We Did It

  • Mapped user personas: Local Explorers and Family Day Planners

  • Audited support calls and app reviews for VOC insights

  • Prioritized top content paths for improved wayfinding

  • Built new IA and screen flows around value-first UX

  • Integrated Drift UI element as a consistent visual pattern

Influence

  • Built and shared a component library for future product iterations

  • Helped define roadmap priorities based on user value

  • Drove cross-functional buy-in with early demos and usability findings

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Tony is a master at both print and digital design… exceptionally creative with a well rounded awareness of the digital needs of a project and works hard to produce best possible user experience solutions.

Joe Smith, Manager, Driftscape

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Learnings

You can’t force exploration, but you can design for it. With tight resources and fast timelines, this project reminded me how the right hierarchy, language, and layout can turn friction into flow. Great UX isn’t just usable — it invites curiosity.

“We made the experience feel like the promise: discovery that guides you, not overwhelms you.”

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