Expedia Group Sustainability UI
Design Team.
Fall 2022.
UXR & UI Design
Company Sponsored Project
*In-Progress*
One Minute Summary ⏰
Co-lead a 14-week user research/design project for Expedia Group aiming to effectively display sustainability data and empower users to make sustainable travel decisions.
The Team 👏🏼
UX Designers (4)
My Role 👩🏻💻
Lead UX Designer:
Championed UXR, UI design of key pages, and product development strategy
User Group 👨👩👧👦
Middle-class, solo travelers
Deliverables 🎁
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Sustainbility community /rewards program.
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UXR report documenting research findings, iterations, and usability testing
Final Design Overview 💭
Establishing the need for my product and the final solution I designed to address it.
I. The Hive - A Sustainable Travel Community 🎉
The Hive, a free-to-join community that allows users to access sustainability filters and save money by earning more Expedia points through choosing sustainable flights
II. User Persona & Journey Map
A realistic visualization of our user groups (solo, middle-aged travelers) and how they currently navigate Expedia in order to
identify areas for growth.
My Design Process 👩🏻💻
Highlighting the research, prototyping, testing, and iteration behind the final designs.
👓 📖 Understanding Sustainable Travel
To start, the team focused on understanding travel sustainability and the psychology behind user engagement with sustainability. We accomplished this through literary reviews and evaluating other companies' approaches to sustainability.
Secondary Research 📚
To begin, the team identified the 3 most important questions/topics in understanding how to create a sustainable travel experience. My personal focus during this phase was understanding how to effectively and ethically motivate customers.
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Competitive Analysis & Analogous Inspiration 🤓
After gaining a better base knowledge of sustainability, the team analyzed how Expedia's competitors and industries outside of travel were making strides toward sustainability.
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🛑 Sustainability information that is localized and inconsistent throughout the user journey
🛑 Sustainability information that is vague and hard to quantify for the average traveler
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💚 Communities that create easy, actionable, ways to be sustainable
Creating a User Persona 👩🏻
By combining the research provided by Expedia Group and the team's research, I created Elena, a refined user persona (left) documenting the key user case and characteristics of our user group: middle-class, solo travelers. We used this persona to evaluate Expedia's current user experience as well as guide our own designs.
Mapping the User Journey 🗺
Using our user persona, we analyzed how users book a flight using Expedia. I then consolidated these findings in a user journey map to visualize the progression of users' thoughts, emotions, and pain points. (click to enlarge)
From this activity, I was inspired to focus on the search portion of the journey.
Early Ideation ✏️
Throughout this sprint, the team continually sketched out our ideas as we were inspired by research. In the end, each team member presented their favorite ideas. Below are the key sketches that went on to inspire our final design.
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sustainability filters
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Call-to-action graphics
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Community of sustainable travelers
👷🏻♀️✏️ Building an MVP
A big goal we had as a team was to create something that would mesh cohesively with Expedia's current designs. In this phase, we ideated in Figma and utilized multiple rounds of quick and informal concept testing to finalize an MVP design.
Initial Wireframes 🖼
To get a broader range of ideas, we split into two teams and built out separate designs. I lead the sub-team focused on researching and designing sustainability filters, specifically what this would look like at the search results stage of the user journey.
#1) Filters + Point System
When initially entering flight details, users are prompted with sustainability filters which they can optionally apply.
If applied, flight results are tagged with relevant filters and display extra Expedia points that can be earned.
#2) Sustainable Community
We also created an initiative that environmentally conscious travelers could join. Upon joining, users would be shown sustainability information relating to each specific airline.
Concept Testing 💡
Next, we conducted concept testing across 15 participants in order to evaluate their comprehension and engagement of each design. Below are the most important conclusions we drew from our results.
Price is Always Key 💰
Environmentally conscious users choose sustainable options so long as the cost to them doesn't exceed a certain threshold (this is unique for each user). By adding monetary incentives users are more willing to engage with sustainability.
Users Loved the Bees 🐝
Participants frequently called out the bee theming in our community design as an effective way to notate sustainability information and a unique aspect that made the experience feel more personable.
Let's Combine Our Designs 🤝🏼
Each design motivated users in different ways. The filters had the clearest comprehension and was best at driving sustainable choices. Oppositely, the community concept was more emotionally engaging to users but unsuccessful at producing results.
Developing our MVP 🛠
After synthesizing the results of our concept testing, the team combined our ideas to create The Hive, a free-to-join community, that allows users to access sustainability filters and earn more points by choosing sustainable flights. From this point onwards, the team began designing on top of Expedia screenshots to visualize the intended implementation of our designs. (click to enlarge)
👩🏻🔬📋 Iterate, Test, Repeat!
With the foundation of our design in place, the team continued to refine our work by A/B testing smaller units of our design and conducting cognitive walkthroughs to evaluate the experience as a whole
Refining Our Search Experience 💎
Because the majority of our user's journey was spent in the search portion, the team decided to first focus on improving this section of the experience. This involved iterating on the filter options themselves and refining how these filters would appear when search results are returned.
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Changing Our Filters
(01) In order to improve the desirability of our filters, I conducted additional research on simple ways that travelers can fly sustainably.
(02) We also created hover descriptions for each filter so users can understand how/why each filter is sustainable.
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Designing the Flight Information Cards
(01) The team created four different designs that played with color, placement, and displaying points in different areas of the card. We then, A/B tested with 5 participants to narrow down on a final design.
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(02) I also redesigned the expanded information that Expedia provides for each flight. My goal for this design was to make the information more skimmable, easy to compare against other flights, and to highlight the sustainability information in a non-intrusive way.
Evalu 💎
Next, we conducted concept testing across 15 participants in order to evaluate their comprehension and engagement of each design. Below are the most important conclusions we drew from our results.
Reflection 💕
Reflecting on what I learned from this experience and highlighting aspects of my personal journey as a designer.
Finding My Personal Style As A Designer 👩🏻🎨
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More Coming Soon! 👀
Feel free to check out some of my other projects in the meantime!
Purdue OWL Redesign
Kohl's Data Visualization