10 mins read • Booking.com
My Role
App Designer
– Interaction, UI design, user research , facilitation, prototyping, usability testing, project scoping
Team
Product Manager
Engineering team
UX Copywriter
Data Analyst
Timeline
Jun 2020 – Jul 2021
Overview
Booking.com has been known for booking accommodations. With the company’s goal of increasing user engagement, we explored the Wishlist feature, which is commonly used for travel planning. Although the Wishlist is well-positioned to help users plan their trips, several challenges were identified: difficulty in saving and viewing preferred accommodations, friction in managing the Wishlist, and challenges in comparing options.
To address these issues, I reimagined the Wishlist experience and designed a solution to better engage users in travel planning, aligning with the company’s focus on increasing user engagement.
The project aimed to create a seamless experience and simplify the decision-making process. We launched a series of designs and produced promising results. More users recognised the value of Wishlist, with a 8.57% increase in new users and a 7.02% rise in successful Wishlist interactions. Additionally, more users are utilising the Wishlist for booking decisions, leading to a 9.11% increase in bookings made through the feature.
Design highlight
Streamline the Wishlist experience to facilitate users’ decision-making process
Process
How did I navigate the path from problem to impactful solution?
Discover the problems
Friction in shortlisting and comparing saved options
I conducted qualitative research (heuristic evaluation, competitor study, and UX dogfooding) and referenced the data analysis. I mapped the findings to the experience map in order to identify the needs and obtain a holistic view of users’ problems.
(View the artefacts of the heuristic evaluation, competitor study, and data analysis in full size.)
Through research, I identified that users’ main needs for the Wishlist are shortlisting and comparing properties during the planning stages when searching for accommodations. However, the research indicated that these needs were not being met. Here are the 3 main user problems identified via the experience mapping.
Difficult to compare options
Limited information and an ineffective display made comparing options difficult, resulting in only 1.8% of users booking from the Wishlist.
Unable to save and view preferred properties easily for future planning
The save action was hard to discover, with only 20% of users saving hotels, and the Wishlist entry point was hidden, leading to low usage.
Friction in managing the Wishlist
Users could not intuitively find, rename, delete, or move lists, and the logic behind the save action varied across platforms, causing significant confusion when planning a trip between the web and the app.
Define user segments
Focus on users with growth potential
Users who’ve used or intend to use the Wishlist are usually travellers planning ahead. We defined these user segments according to their engagement with the Wishlist and mapped the issues preventing users from achieving a deeper level of engagement.
Based on growth potential, the targeted groups are Wishlist-intent users, users who have saved properties, and another segment for users who have both saved and viewed options.
Define the focus and success criteria
Prioritise mobile app and measure success with metrics
The goal was to streamline the user journey from planning to booking, aligning with our strategy to be the top trip-planning platform. To drive success, we prioritised the mobile app, as it accounted for the majority of Wishlist bookings. We also defined success metrics to measure our impact.
Identify challenges
Empowered but also limited by the legacy
Multiple teams had worked on different features related to the Wishlist. Although we could learn from many findings, we identified the impact of the legacy issues before entering the ideation stage.
I identified UX debt across every Wishlist funnel with conflicts and inconsistencies. Previous teams had primarily focused on driving conversions, without considering the holistic user experience.
To address this, I conducted a UX audit for each platform and collaborated with the team to prioritise areas for improvement.
Ideate
Brainstorm solutions, think big
With a clear priority and users’ problems in mind, I facilitated a series of workshops with the team to brainstorm solutions. There were many great ideas, which were summarised into one concept.
The Wishlist should serve as a tracker, providing informative content for users to compare options, allowing them to shortlist their preferences, and helping them resume from where they left off.
Conceptualise the ideas
Turn ideas into ideals
I mapped the ideas to each phase of the journey to ensure that our solutions were relevant to users. I then developed a design vision based on the solutions and respective ideas, and presented the wireframes and flow charts to the stakeholders for feedback. Then, I reviewed the feedback and revised the design accordingly after several rounds of design critiques.
Design solutions
Streamline the Wishlist experience to facilitate users’ decision-making process
To address the friction in shortlisting and comparing saved options, the Wishlist serves as a tracker
that enables users to shortlist their preferences, helps them resume where they left off, and allows them to compare options with informative content.
The key features highlighted in the Wishlist design vision.
Guide new users to explore the Wishlist
Provide recommended lists for new users to explore the Wishlist.
Expand Wishlist touch points in the search journey
Enable users to save the properties smoothly and easily access the Wishlist.
Promote the value of the Wishlist
Prompt users to save properties during the search process when their intention is detected.
Provide timely editing to efficiently organise the Wishlist
Allow users to move or create a new list for their saved properties.
Present recently-saved options in a list
Help users to pick up where they left off.
Provide informative content and efficient tools in the list details
Reinforce relevant content and add the kind that helps users to make an easy comparison.
Offer a compact view to compare all saved properties
Display the key information of properties side-by-side to help users to make an easy comparison.
Offer consistent cross-platform Wishlist experience
Make info and interaction consistent between the web and the app to reduce the gap across platforms.
Before and After
What has been improved?
A side-by-side comparison of the old and new key screens of the Wishlist list view, editing process, and detail page.
Validate concepts
Are we Are we going in the right direction?
Positive feedback, but much to be iterated
I created interactive prototypes and conducted unmoderated and moderated tests to determine if our ideas worked before the development.
This enabled us to determine if the concepts were misaligned with users’ expectations in order to influence the design and product direction at an early stage.
The test participants were positive about the planned changes to the Wishlist. The feedback enhanced our confidence to keep building on the validated ideas.
It’s very tidy, and it can actually help me to find the hotels I previously saved quicker.
Love the view because it’s so compact!
However, we also identified a few underlying problems and brought them to the team to re-evaluate the scope.
Although I see the benefit of it, I don’t really think it’s providing much more information, so maybe you should build on it.
I feel like it’s not that easy to understand that bit.
After the testing, we prioritised these ideas based on the users’ feedback. Then I started to break down the design vision to multiple users’ stories.
Implementation
Bring vision to reality
We broke down the design vision into a series of users’ stories. We defined the hypothesis and metrics for each story to determine if it could achieve our expected outcome.
After we reached an agreement with the team, I created detailed specs in Figma and reviewed them with the UX community & the developers for feedback and revision.
At the same time, I updated the Wishlist-specific patterns and key screens as a single source of truth. This enabled everyone to keep up to date regarding every feature and other vertical teams were able to use it when working on the Wishlist-related feature.
Results
Improve the usability of the Wishlist and bring the value to the business
We released a few features and ran the A/B testing to observe if these ideas had a positive impact on users.
8 key product features were launched on the app, desktop web and mobile web, and the results were promising.
+8.57%
New users
More users understand the value of Wishlist
+7.02%
Task completion
Streamline the Wishlist management process
+9.11%
Wishlist bookings
More users make a decision via Wishlist
Learning
Strengthen the foundation
The foundation should be strengthened before developing advanced features. Many teams had built features on top of Wishlist and disregarded the fact that its basic functions were broken, which brought more conflict.
Prioritise
Although we found multiple aspects of issues, we managed to narrow those down to three focuses and deprioritise others based on the overarching strategy from the organisation and the impact we could deliver.
Have a vision ahead and keep iterating it
I came up with a high-level design as a head start. It helped me communicate with the stakeholders efficiently and motivated me to think ahead. I was able to iterate it based on the restriction and feedback given by the team and the community.