That is the work. What it costs is published, before any call.
ConceptStudio concept: a product we invented to work through a real planning problem. No client, nothing shipped, nothing measured.How we use AI
Studio concept · fictional businessWhat this means
Studio concept: a product we invented to work through a real planning problem. No client, nothing shipped, nothing measured. How we use AI
What can the whole group say yes to?
The hard part of a weekend away is getting dates, budgets and preferences out of a group chat without making one friend reconcile them all. This mobile concept gathers dates and private limits, compares options on the same facts, and records a plan only when everyone says yes—so the group can see what fits before anyone books.
- The challenge
- Dates, budgets and preferences stay buried in a group chat, leaving one organiser to reconcile them and a vote that can ignore someone's limit.
- The decision
- Keep each total private, compare every option against the same dates and costs, and count agreement only after each person says yes.
- Why it helps
- The group can see what fits and whether everyone agreed before booking tasks begin. Tandem is a studio concept; nobody has used or tested it.
4 friends add their dates, privately.1 weekend works for everyone: Fri 12 to Sun 14 June.
Rendered screens of the prototype; the friends and the dates are invented. Studio concept.
- Product
- Tandem (fictional)
- Sector
- Travel / consumer app
- Platform
- Mobile web, Canada
- Disciplines
- Product strategy, Mobile UX and UI, Visual identity, Prototype, Validation plan
- Type
- Avenir Next and Helvetica Neue
- Status
- Studio concept · nothing shipped
Four phones, one plan, four private limits
Each friend sees the same weekend, the same per-person estimate and who has said yes, and only their own limit. Nobody learns anyone else’s number. The friends, the limits and the costs are invented.
From the group chat to an option all four can say yes to.
Dates, a private limit nobody else sees, the same facts for every place, and an explicit yes from each person: the whole plan, recorded from the working prototype on this page at phone size, 60 fps. Studio concept.
Try it: turn a group chat’s maybe into agreed dates, a budget that fits, a place and a yes from everyone
The working prototype, native on this page: keyboard and touch, no iframe. Nothing is sent.
It never asks for
- Your exact limit, shown to friends
- A card or any payment
- Your contacts or the group chat itself
- Your location
Prototype — nothing is sent, nothing is booked. A studio concept; the friends and costs are invented.
Want this working on your site?We start with a free written Redline of the site you have.
Request a RedlineThree decisions, as redlines
What the usual group-trip flow says, what we would put in its place, and why. The product, the people and the costs are invented.
Decision 1: Feasibility before popularity.
Our first sketch asked the group which place was most popular, and a vote can win while hiding a date or a cost someone cannot meet. The shortlist now checks every option against everyone's dates and private limits first, labels each one Fits all 4 or Needs a change, and only then asks for a preference.
What fits everyone? Compare what fits, then choose.
Decision 2: The budget is private, and it is a total.
Each friend sets one number for the whole weekend, stay, travel, food and activities, and nobody else ever sees it. Tandem uses it only to say whether an option fits. Asking in the chat makes people round up to match the group, or go quiet.
Your maximum for the whole weekend. Only you can see it.
Decision 3: Silence never counts as agreement.
A plan is agreed only when every person accepts the same dates, option and cost estimate. If any of those changes, everyone confirms again, and a missed deadline prompts a check-in rather than a decision. Agreed is not booked: the next screen hands out booking tasks, and people book directly with the provider.
3 of 4 have accepted. Your turn.
The identity
The mark, the palette and the type the screens share. The product is invented.
tandem
Find your common ground.
- Ink#202A27
- Sage#CCDDD5
- Citrus#E3F578
- Lilac#DCD9ED
- Avenir NextDisplay and the wordmark
- Helvetica NeueCompact UI text
Limits- An invented product; no client commissioned it.
- The prototype has not been tested with users.
- Speed and accessibility figures are targets, not measurements.
Checks we would run
- Interviews with organisers and invitees about recent group trips, including ones that never happened, to rebuild the chat-to-decision path.
- A prototype study with existing friend groups: private input, cost comparison, disagreement and the final acceptance step.
- A small concierge pilot on real weekend plans with hand-curated options, through the booking handoff and any changes after agreement.
- The acceptance rule we would hold it to: no agreed plan may break a limit someone submitted.
The limits
- Tandem, the friends, the weekends and every cost on these screens are invented. Nobody has used it and nothing has been tested.
- The other three friends in the prototype are scripted; their dates and limits are fixed.
- Limits stay private, but in a group of four a Fits all signal can still hint at someone's limit. That needs testing.
- Competitor features informed the concept; a gap in the market has not been established.
- The screens are our renders; the coastal photograph inside some of them is a generated image. The name has not been cleared.
What we did not do
- A popularity vote that can override someone's limit.
- Showing anyone's exact budget to the group.
- Treating no reply by a deadline as a yes.
- Booking and payment inside the first version: people book directly with the provider.
- Requiring an app install before a friend can add their dates.
- Ratings, waitlist counts or testimonials we do not have, on the landing page.
Building a consumer app?
Send us the flow you are least sure of; we reply with what we would test first.