EXPEDIA GROUP

Expedias partners wanted a way to better understand how travelers were interacting with their listing through previews. I explored where this need was coming from and developed an implementation strategy to address it in order to drive a partners confidence in their listing.

TIMELINE

Summer 2023

ROLE

Solo Design Researcher

TOOLS USED

Figma, Miro

Over the summer of 2023, I joined Expedia Group as a UX Design intern, working towards their mission of powering global travel through technology. As a member of the Marketplace Ready team, my focus was on creating and elevating onboarding experiences for Expedias partners (airlines, hotels, vacation homes, cruise lines, and car rental companies) in order to set them up for success within the travel marketplace serving millions of travelers around the globe.

It can be difficult to know how best to represent your product or service to customers when you don’t know what they are looking for. How do you tailor your listing in a way that targets your customers needs and expectations? How can the listing tool itself help you create more effective listings?

There had been a long history of Expedias’ partners asking for ways to get a fuller picture of what their property listing looks like from a travelers point of view using a preview feature. My goal was to identify where this need was coming from and determine strategies around how Expedia can use it as a tool to bridge the gap between their partners and the travelers interested in their properties. Throughout my design process, I gradually distilled user needs and identified design recommendations through iterative exploration.

To get a clear idea of the existing problem space and better understand partner’s experience with setting up and maintaining listings, I started by engaging in some cross-team collaboration and secondary research. Through this, I was able to chip away at the two big questions driving the exploration.

QUESTION ONEWhy do partners want previews?

I set up virtual chats with UX Researchers from across the company to gather existing internal research documentation that touched on previews, reviews, or the Expedia listing experience. In one study in particular, all 7 of the users interviewed wanted to see a listing preview.

QUESTION TWO

What needs aren’t being met by not having previews?

I performed a competitive analysis and feature decomposition, breaking down the makeup of other preview and review implementations across other onboarding user flows. The goal here was to identify how the design of previews changed depending on evolving user needs.

Continuing to frame research through participatory ideation

With primary research questions now identified, I facilitated a traveler preview exploration workshop with a group of 6 designers, product managers, and engineers. I started by presenting my research findings to provide some context, and then guided the group in the creation of “How Might We” statements. Then, using the HMW’s, I had participants do a Crazy 8’s design activity to explore a range of use cases. Finally, we engaged in open discussion, talking through their decisions during the design activity and noting reflections.

The collaborative ideation from the workshop coupled with my intial secondary research came together to produce a Jobs to Be Done framework to support the creation of a roadmap to incrementally build towards an onboarding experience armed with previews.

Blue sky design exploration to find the perfect preview

With the outlined I now had a clear vision of where and what the goals of a preview implemention should be. Using the ideas generated from the workshop and the key catgeories as guidelines, I began sketching out low-fidelity design solutions and categorized them based on a variety of spectrums to determine the optimal configuration of previews that met these goals.

I then got input from product, engineering, researchers, and other designers to judge each preview implementation on a set of goal criteria, helping to reframe and refine user needs and goals addressed by each.

STAGE ONE: SETTING UP A LISTING

For a guided experience that focuses on coaching, provide mini annotated previews of existing high performing listings.

This stage includes the onboarding and listing creation flow that partners go through when setting up their profile and new listing. The goal of previews at this stage is to supplement and inform the listing creation process. To accomplish this the preview must:

Communicate what makes listings successful
Show examples of high quality listing content to reference
Contextualize the onboarding questions
Communicate and manage expectations for the rest of the listing experience

STAGE TWO: REVIEWING A LISTING

To review listing content at the end of the onboarding flow, present content in the form of a full listing preview that links back to onboarding questions for easy edits.

This stage includes the overview screen at the end of the listing creation flow. This is where partners review and confirm all of the information that they included in their listing. The goal of previews at this stage is to highlight gaps and opportunities in listing content. To accomplish this the preview must:

Allow partners to “play traveler” by interacting with their own listing from a travelers pov
Allow partners to review the accuracy of listing content in context
Flag any missing content by showing the impact that emptiness makes
Make it easy to link back to onboarding questions to make any edits as need be

STAGE THREE: MAINTAINING A LISTING

Once a listing is completed and up for travelers to see, the goal of previews is to see any maintenance edits reflected from the live perspective of a traveler.

This stage includes the portal called partner central where users are able to make edits or updates to their listing once it’s already live. The goal of previews at this stage is to see listing edits reflected from the perspective of a traveler. To accomplish this the preview must:

Address any discrepancies between the traveler perspective and the partners editing experience
Minimize steps partner has to make between editing listing content and referencing previews
Communicate how the listing appears in different contexts (mobile vs desktop, full page listing vs card, differing brands etc)
Give partners active feedback on how they can make their listing better

Because partner central was going through a complete design upheaval at the time of working on this project, I decided against formulating a fleshed out design recommedation for this stage.