WanderUtah

Overview

WanderUtah is a mobile app concept for exploring and planning trips to Utah's five national parks: Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion. The project ran from early sketches through high-fidelity Figma prototypes, and the goal was to design something that feels as good as the landscape it represents.

The Problem

Most national park apps and websites are utility-first — they get you permits and directions, but they don't inspire. I wanted to design something that bridges the gap between trip planning and the feeling of actually being out there. The challenge was building that emotional quality into a functional, navigable app.

Research & Direction

I started with mood boards to define the visual language — what does "Utah" look like digitally? I landed on a palette rooted in each park's actual colors: sandstone reds, sage greens, desert sky blues. Each park needed to feel distinct while sharing a cohesive design system.

From there I sketched navigation concepts before committing anything to Figma. The key question was how to organize five parks with different characters without making users feel lost between them.

Design Decisions

Park-specific color theming. Rather than one brand color, each park section uses a tinted palette pulled from its landscape. This makes navigation intuitive — you always know where you are — and it rewards users who explore all five parks.

Simplified information hierarchy. I kept each park detail page to three levels: a hero image with the park name, a brief description and conditions summary, and an events/activities section. No menus buried inside menus.

Event calendar as an anchor feature. A lot of people plan trips around specific events — meteor showers, ranger programs, peak bloom seasons. Surfacing those upfront gave the app a reason to be opened more than once.

What I'd Do Differently

The prototype doesn't yet handle the "planning" side well — there's no way to save parks, build an itinerary, or share a trip. If I were taking this further, that would be the next feature set. I'd also want to do user testing with actual trip planners to validate the navigation structure before building out more park content.

Outcome

WanderUtah showed me how design constraints — in this case, five parks that each needed to feel like their own place — can actually be a useful forcing function. The limitation pushed me toward a theming system I wouldn't have arrived at otherwise, and the result is something that feels personal rather than generic.