Doodle Destinations:
If you can sketch it, you can get there.

2018

A 2018 concept for Emirates: users sketch their dream destination, a Vision API finds the real place in the Emirates network, and the sketch becomes a personalised flight offer. Fully prototyped. Not shipped.

Role

Art Director — Concept, Research, UX, Prototyping

client

Emirates

service

Concept Development, Experience Design, AI/ML

PLATFORM

Instagram, Mobile, DOOH

Type

Concept / Pitch Idea

The Idea

Emirates’ strategic goal at the time was to communicate the breadth of its destination network — not through lists, but through something people could actually feel.

The trigger was a Getty Images case: their internal doodle-search tool let photographers sketch a motif to find matching stock images via machine learning. The question was simple — could that logic work for travel dreams?

I tested Google Vision API with a rough sketch. The network classified landscape types, coastlines, and architecture even from imprecise drawings. That was enough to write the concept.

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Emirates Doodle Destinations pitch board — complete concept overview including mechanic, UX flow, and campaign executions

Doodle Destinations Pitch Deck Creative Board

How it worked

The original concept was built around Instagram — the one platform where people were already using for travel inspiration.

A user opens an Instagram Story, sketches their dream destination — a beach, a skyline, a mountain range — and tags the Emirates account. A bot analyses the sketch via Vision API, matches it against a database of Emirates destinations, and replies with the result: the original doodle alongside a photo of the matching place, with the user tagged. A DM follows with a discount code for that destination.

No app download. No form. Just a sketch and a match.

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Doodle Destinations Phase 0 — idle Instagram Story screen prompting the user to sketch their dream destination

Phase 0 — Idle: blank canvas prompting the user to sketch their destination

Doodle Destinations Phase 1 — user actively sketching a travel scene on the Instagram Story canvas

Phase 1 — Draw: user sketches a travel scene on the Instagram Story canvas

Doodle Destinations Phase 5 — Vision API searching the Emirates destination database to match the submitted sketch

Phase 5 — Search: Vision API matches the sketch against Emirates destinations

Doodle Destinations Phase 7 — matched destination revealed alongside the original sketch, with personalised flight offer and CTA

Phase 7 — Result: destination photo alongside original sketch, with personalised flight offer

Under the hood

The matching logic ran on Google Vision API — a deep neural network trained on image recognition across landscape types, architectural forms, and natural features. Even rough sketches carry enough structural information for classification: a curved horizon reads as coastline, vertical shapes cluster toward cities.

‍The implementation was scoped with Nerds Hamburg, a tech studio in the agency network. They would build and host the pipeline on AWS — Vision API for sketch analysis, a curated destination image database for matching, and the Instagram bot backend for response and DM delivery.
‍Getty Images was approached for the destination database. They declined. Nerds’ alternative: build the database from 2,000–4,000 destination images from the Emirates network directly. Payment only on delivery of a licensed image to a user.
‍Target match accuracy for the prototype: 60%.

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Animated Phase Flow

Built for scale — and for high traffic locations

A second execution extended the concept to large-format screens in train stations and airports.

Users sketch directly on the screen. The same matching logic runs. The reveal — destination photo, flight offer — plays out at billboard scale. A QR code continues the experience on mobile.

The format was developed for award-case potential: a sketch portal to another place, built into the architecture of departure.

Doodle Destinations DOOH execution — large-format airport and transit screen with sketch-to-destination interface at billboard scale

The prototype

The full concept was developed through to prototype stage: a six-section case board, a complete mobile user flow (sketch input through to share CTA), DOOH mockups, social ad executions, and an animated walkthrough.
In 2018, semantic image matching for consumer brand activation was genuinely novel. The infrastructure existed. The use case was clear. The prototype budget was €6,000.

It was a pitch. It didn’t get built.

Projected Impact over a 4-week activation:

50,000 doodles shared.
2,500 vouchers delivered.

Doodle Destinations: If you can sketch it, you can get there.