Tallest Tourguide & Friends

Context

I started this project because my tour-guiding business needed a digital presence that did more than just list tours and take bookings. The Balkans attract curious travelers, and most resources about the region—blogs, guides, local experiences—are scattered across platforms that don’t work well together. I wanted to build a destination. A place where someone could discover daily tours, research multi-day routes through the region, read stories about local culture, get practical travel tips, and actually book with confidence. The site needed to feel intentional and premium because that’s what the market was missing.

My Role

Product Owner, Product Designer, UX/UI Designer, and Developer (with AI assistance). I owned every decision—from what to build and why, to how it should feel. I couldn’t write the code myself, but I understood it well enough to direct it. My five-to-six years in UX/UI design meant I could steer the architecture toward human experience, not just technical possibility.

Process

I started with Claude Code’s free plan to understand the full build workflow. Rather than guess at what was possible, I researched competitor sites and studied patterns in solid implementations. Then I worked sequentially: component by component, page by page. No trying to build everything at once.

The inflection point came when I realized every page needed a booking system—which meant designing a database backend. I structured the data in Airtable, connected it to capture form submissions from the website, and routed confirmations through EmailJS. The infrastructure was invisible to users. It had to be.

Research

I spent time understanding what travelers actually needed. I analyzed competitor sites across the region—what worked, what felt cheap, where the friction points were. Most sites treated booking as a transaction. I wanted it to feel like a conversation. That shaped every decision: how forms were structured, what information came first, how confirmations landed in the inbox.

I also studied micro-interactions and motion design in travel and hospitality sites that felt premium. Most competitors in the region didn’t invest there. That became my differentiator.

Approach

Design consumed most of my time through late March. I spent two weeks alone on mobile—not because it was broken, but because I kept testing, refining how people moved through the experience. Every input field, every button state, every transition had to earn its place.

I’d originally aimed for an April 1st launch, but I extended the deadline to add the details that most competitors skip: micro-interactions, motion, intentional transitions. A booking button doesn’t need to animate. But when it does, it signals that someone cared about how this feels. That separation between functional and premium is where the work happened.

Final Design

I shipped a few pages from the final design on April 1st. The site catalogs daily and multi-day tours, publishes stories and tips, and functions as a genuine resource hub—not just a booking interface. Every page carries the same level of polish: refined typography, responsive layouts that work on any device, interactions that feel alive.

The premium feel comes from consistency and restraint. I didn’t add animation for its own sake. Every motion serves the user—it clarifies, guides, or delights. That discipline separates this from the majority of tourism sites in the region.

Impact

I’m measuring this now. Right now it’s just released, so I’m collecting data on how people use it, where they spend time, and what they book. Early indicators matter less than sustained patterns. I’m watching for which tours get booked, which blog posts get read, and whether the site genuinely becomes a resource people return to or just a place they use once.

What I Learned

I proved I can deliver premium products at production scale when AI handles the code. But the real discovery: my UX/UI design experience was the multiplier. It gave AI a framework—a way to understand human experience complexity instead of just optimizing for technical possibility. A good designer steers an AI builder toward decisions that feel right, not just work right.

The second insight was about iteration. I thought the deadline was April 1st until I realized it wasn’t. That extra time, spent refining details, compounded. Each refinement built on the last. That’s when a product stops feeling like a checklist and starts feeling like something someone built with intention.

The third was confidence. I can read code well enough to guide it. I can navigate complexity by researching and asking good questions instead of already knowing the answers. That’s a useful skill for someone who wants to be a product manager.