During my 13 months as Senior UX Designer, I redesigned all facets of the product, from the member’s account and calendar, to the booking funnel and map search views.

1. Booking calendar and search redesign

2. Designing a traveller type needs-based experience

3. Optimising the journey for all traveler types

4. Home Screen and Member’s Account redesign

Outcomes

PROBLEM: While the app that was already doing well in the market, its booking calendar was a little clunky and unintuitive. I involved the developer who worked on the original calendar, inviting him to join me in the process to advise on technical considerations for the solution ideas.

A frictionless experience all depended on the smoothest micro experiences, such as when a user chose a check-in date and the UI auto adjusts to allow them to select the check-out date.

User testing and market research

To validate our concerns and determine all the friction points, I gave users simple tasks to perform on our existing calendar, and compared the experience to other leading booking apps to identify better patterns.

Ideation & Testing

I tested various solutions to determine the best combinations of micro-interactions.

I then evolved the design and A/B tested with the existing experience, which it succeeded in out-converting.

PROBLEM: How could we ensure key pages provided for the key needs for all traveler types?

Co-design workshop

EXPLORING THE END-TO-END JOURNEY

The entire HotelsCombined team had a lot of ideas, and they collectively represented all of our traveler types.

Since we didn’t have a big budget for focus groups, etc., I gathered together staff from across the business, who represented all personas, and ran a workshop to explore how they booked a holiday, allowing them to design their solution from initial research to clicking ‘Book now’ to arriving at the hotel.

I asked each participant to map out their experience on the wall from when they start planning a holiday, to searching, booking, arriving at accommodation, and through the stay—talking aloud as they did—to create booking experience timelines from multiple perspectives.

Participants talked us through their journeys, needs, and pains, as I captured notes.

I later analysed these journeys to determine what were the common needs and content elements preferred by all traveller types at each stage.

FOCUSING ON THE SEARCH RESULTS PAGE

I then asked the group to review competitor search-result page designs to capture their thoughts about what worked form them and what didn’t, which we talked through and I analysed later

Participants gave the pages an overall result using a happy, sad, or neutral face—this helped give us an immediate visual result we could discuss.

Outcomes

The collective insight from the workshop helped guide wireframes for a refined booking journey that in the first instance catered for the key needs of travellers, while providing easily accessible information specific to traveller types.

I also completed the redesign of the home screen and the Member’s Account.

For the member’s account, I drew ideas from a market analysis and the the traveller needs co-design workshop to mock up concepts for user-testing. I evolved the account from a simple single profile page to a small suite of tools to help booking, such as wish lists, saved searches, etc.

I also designed a fresh new home screen, bringing in the polar bear mascot, as branding was a key differentiator for hotel booking apps which otherwise offered the same functionality.