So after a lot of hard work we’re extremely happy to unleash the new Travelstormer into the wild.

Given we call ourselves a decision-making product, we decided a while ago that we need to get these features spot-on before anything else matters, so hopefully you’ll see we’ve put a lot of effort into this.

Brainstorming has been great up until now for getting ideas on the table, but actually getting full contribution for a final decision has been the missing element. Occasional staggered voting from trip members isn’t enough, we need to present a list of options and say “Pick One, Now!”

The Three Stages of Decision-making

Firstly “Brainstorms” have now been renamed to “Decisions”, and are now split into three different steps (Brainstorming happens within a Decision now).

Brainstorm Ideas
This is now a period of time with an expiry where ideas, links and images are added by the group as research. The owner of the decision controls how long this goes for.

“Make Your Pick”
Once the brainstorming time period ends, the group is asked to select their favourite option, or “make a pick”. This is done with a single click from an email, with no need to login, so it’s super easy to get your group to do it.

Owner Finalises
The group is given a couple of days after brainstorming has finished to make their picks. After this time, the owner of the decision can easily finalise the decision in the knowledge that everyone’s had a chance to be heard.

We’ve also built in a way to skip the brainstorming step, so as the creator you add all of the ideas yourself, and the Decision goes straight into the picking stage. (This is basically a Poll as it’s known in the wild!)

Other Features

• Mobile Friendly - We’ve put a lot of work into making Travelstormer display nicely on your mobile devices, this is in beta but we’re excited to get it in front of you.
• Personalise your Trip Background - Customise your trip with a full browser background trip image.
• One-click Login from emails - We’re in constant pursuit to make it easier to get contribution from the ‘lazier’ trip members, we think instant login links are the way forward.
• Print or Download your Itinerary as a PDF - We admit this one’s a little overdue. We hope you’ll find it helpful to check in on when you’re on your trip.

Criticism, that is. There is no experience quite like being a start up founder. You pour your heart and soul into creating, nurturing, developing your start up into something that can live and breath and every chance you get you ask, even beg, for brutal honesty on what’s wrong with it.

Some might call it ‘constructive feedback’ but that would be BS. What we’re really after is brutal, zero sugar criticism on areas where we suck and the reality is that without it, you don’t stand a chance of survival.

This is what makes being involved in a start up so unique – there is no other experience in life where you are so happy to be told what you’re doing wrong.

Feedback has been the key to Travelstormer’s evolution of the last 12 months. Our vision of simplifying and streamlining the group travel planning process has remained unchanged since day 1 as the need we are aiming to fill is still at the centre of everything we do. What has changed is the way in which we are now attempting to achieve this vision. We have been through much iteration over the last 12 months; all based on what we’ve been told, and more importantly, what we’ve learnt along the way.

Our next round of soon to be live refinement is solely focused on further improving Travelstormer’s nucleus – the decision making process. The journey from idea to itinerary will become a truly seamless experience for all trip members, regardless of whether you are driving the agenda or, just along for the ride.

As we seek funding to take Travelstormer to the next level, we are confident that our willingness to take a beating, combined with our focus on converting this ‘feedback’ into a better user experience, will keep us on track to achieve our vision.

We’ve recently updated the trip homepage to include a series of the most relevant content from your trip and the tasks related to them. We’ve been testing this behind the scenes for a while and we think it’s a great way to get the right content in front of the group.

These come in the form of decisions you need to contribute to, unread messages and expenses you owe (or are owed). If you have any questions you can always reach us at support.travelstormer.com, we hope you find it useful.

As you may have discovered by now if you use Travelstormer, we’re constantly iterating our design and flow through the website. We believe a website can never truly be “finished” as the needs of its users are constantly evolving and being surfaced, which should in turn be reflected by the website itself.

We’ve been testing a new version of the Travelstormer sidebar where the trip image, and other confirmed trip details sit above your brainstorms, rather than above the activity feed.

This change gives more attention to the activity feed and sits the confirmed details of your trip near the unconfirmed (brainstormed) details. You’ll also find you have the ability to upload a much larger trip image now, so make sure you put something inspirational up for your group planning HQ!

Expenses are an awesome part of Travelstormer, we see groups using a lot so it makes sense that we give you the best experience possible.
We’ve polished the Expenses view to give you a bit better insight into what makes up each purchase, including an expandable panel showing the shares involved in each purchase and how the split breaks down. We hope you find it useful!
PS. Keep an eye out in this months Money Magazine for a feature on Expenses in Travelstormer…