Product design question

Design a social travel product.

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Tests full product design combining two hard problems, trust in a marketplace/social context and discovery, without an existing template to lean on.

Define the target user: social travelers who want to plan trips with friends or meet like-minded travelers, distinct from solo trip-planning tools like TripIt.
Identify the core pain point: coordinating group trip decisions (dates, budget, itinerary) is scattered across chat apps, docs, and separate booking sites.
Design the core loop: a shared trip board where group members vote on destinations/activities, synced with a lightweight budget tracker and itinerary view.
Add a social discovery layer: see where friends have traveled and get recommendations based on their trips, differentiating from purely logistical tools.
Define success: completed trip-plans per group (a plan that results in actual bookings) and repeat group-trip creation rate.

Picks group trip coordination as the specific wedge, a real, underserved pain point, rather than a generic 'travel social network'.
Differentiates clearly from existing tools (TripIt for solo logistics, Instagram for passive travel inspiration) by naming the gap between them.
Uses an illustrative number, e.g. assume group trips take 15+ messages across apps to plan today, motivating a single shared tool.
Picks outcome-based success metrics (completed plans, repeat usage) over vanity metrics like sign-ups.

Designing a generic photo-sharing travel app without a clear differentiated core loop.
Not addressing group decision-making friction, which is the actual pain point 'social travel' implies.

How would you monetize this without adding friction to the free planning experience?
How would you bootstrap the social/discovery layer before you have a large user base?