All case studies
From 170+ interviews to an agentic AI product
Founder & CX Research LeadAlavanz (formerly Wanderella) · Madrid
A self-funded, AI-native venture where the research changed the problem worth solving.
A self-funded, AI-native venture where the research changed the problem worth solving.
Remove the friction of travelling as a woman, across cultures.
Before building anything: is this the problem people actually want solved?
As founder and research lead, I didn’t start from a product idea. Each step had to earn the next one.
20 interviews on travel friction. Then, in July 2024, I started again: 150+ interviews on time and mental load, across cultures.
Clustered every pain point, tested the assumptions behind each one and chose one problem.
Mapped competitors, funding and emerging technology, and the customer who would pay most.
An AI-native, multi-agent product, prototyped in Figma, validated with users and shown to investors.
Remove the friction of travelling as a woman, across cultures.
Travel friction, and how women travel differently across cultures.
How people manage their time, and the mental load that leaves no time for the trip.
Relief from mental load. The trip was a symptom, not the problem.
Ideas the evidence didn’t support, including concepts prototyped with AI and augmented reality, were dropped early.
Nobody asked for “less mental load”. They talked about apps, messages and missed events. Underneath were feelings people rarely say out loud.
Judged as a founder and as a mother, and feeling guilty about the time each one took from the other.
And pressure to keep up a constant digital presence.
So many apps that one founder went back to a paper notebook.
Messages, events and opportunities scattered across too many channels.
Not more advice. A sense of being on the right track.
Wary of AI deciding for her. She wanted to accept, decline and override.
Years of reading anthropology taught me to look at routines, roles and the work nobody sees. The sociologist Monique Haicault gave that invisible work a name: the mental load.
The interviews produced far more problems than any product could solve. I clustered them, tested the assumptions behind each one, and narrowed them down step by step.
Important information is scattered across too many channels.
Solving it also reduces decision fatigue.
“Society expects too much of mothers.” Real, but cultural. Technology alone can’t fix it, and it made a weaker business case.
Only once the problem was clear did I look at who would pay to have it solved.
They felt the problem most sharply, and they would pay much more for a solution that really worked.
Freemium, paid by the user. The condition was clear: it had to replace several tools, not add one more. Spanish-speaking respondents leaned towards free options, so the free tier mattered.
Everything that competes for her attention, in one place.
Wrapped in her evolving profile: her goals and roles, learned from each decision.
Every choice she makes teaches her profile, so tomorrow’s feed fits her better. The AI suggests; she stays in control.
In July 2024 I started the research again. It showed that the deeper need was relief from mental load, not travel. Ideas the evidence didn’t support were dropped early.
A Figma prototype was validated with users and presented to investors. The venture was paused in February 2026 when funding wasn’t secured.