UX Case Study: What if Expedia was tailored to the needs of socially conscientious travelers? (2024)

My team of 3 UX designers received a client brief that stated that Expedia Group wants resolve any usability issues occurring on their responsive website for their primary persona. Moreover, the client was interested in incorporating a feature to their website in order to meet the expectations of more socially conscientious consumers. We collaboratively worked on redesigning Expedia’s responsive website and adding a checkbox “ I want to see eco-friendly options”on the Search Results page as well as assigning an eco-friendly icon to hotels pursuing best environmental practices.

To uncover the demographics of potential users we set up a screener survey to be able to address all age groups and genders while doing user interviews. Setting up a survey also helped us create a database of contacts for usability tests. Our main reason behind screening users was to better understand what travel booking websites/apps people use and see how socially engaged travelers are.

As we kicked off the project, my whole team worked collaboratively during the research phase and design studio. We were all doing 4 user interviews via phone, compiling data from those during Research Synthesis , creating a Persona and journey map, as well as coming up with a Problem Statement.

Each of my team members was assigned a certain number of wireframes to draw in Sketch. Therefore, we worked on building mid-fi and hi-fi wireframes independently. Later we merged all of them into one Sketch file and exported them to InVision to create a clickable prototype as a team. I alone worked on secondary platform breakpoint design.

The timeframe for the project ran from January 2 to January 14 covering. We’ve spent 11 days in total to finish the project. Speaking of budget, there was no budget allocated for this project.

I was looking forward to that project, since it was my first UX team project. I’ve learned so much about myself and my working style thanks to that experience. I’m very grateful to my team for bearing my straight-forward approach to providing feedback and keeping up with my fast pace.

Why set up a Screener Survey?

We set up a Screener Survey in Google Forms to seek out users who might qualify for user interviews. The main focus was to uncover the demographics, travel booking experience and level of social engagement. We shared a link to Screener Survey across our social media channels.

Below is the list of screening questions we asked.

DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS:

1.What’s your name?
2.What is your age?
3.What is your gender?
4.Where do you currently live?

TRAVEL QUESTIONS:

5.How many flights have you booked in the last year?

6.What resources do you use to book your travel plans?

SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS QUESTIONS:

7. If applicable, what volunteer related activities have you participated in over the last two years?

8.What social causes are you particularly interested in? Check all that apply.

Environmental sustainability, Education, Poverty/homelessness, Public Health, Women’s Rights, Civil Rights, LGBTQ+ Rights, Animal Rights, Other

CLOSING QUESTIONS:

What is your preferred contact method? Please provide your contact information below.

Within 24 hours we have received 19 submissions. After analyzing the data we agreed on the fact that only 8 people met the qualification criteria of both frequent flying and engaging in volunteerism.

• 17 survey participants tend to use travel booking website/mobile apps
• 10 survey participants booked between 3 to 5 flights last year
• 6 survey participants booked 5 and more flights last year.
• 8 survey participants took part in volunteer activities over the last two years.
• All 19 survey participants care about social problems: education, poverty/homelessness, public health, gender equality, environmental sustainability and civil rights ranking highest.

To recap, most participants were avid travelers.

In total, we interviewed 4 users from our research pool. We interviewed 2 males and 2 females, all research participants belonged to different age groups: 18–24, 25–34, 55–65, 65+. The reason behind that was aiming at gender/age balance to get more versatile data. Our goal was to understand people’s habits related to travel as well as their involvement in socially conscious practices.

Below is the list of interview questions we asked during our user research.

OPENING QUESTIONS:

Hi, how are you?
What’s your name?
What do you do?
Do you mind if we hop into a few questions that will aid us in our study?

TOPIC-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS:

1. Why do you travel?
2. When was the last time you booked a flight?
3. Walk me through that booking process in as much detail as you can.
4. Was there anything that made this experience easier or more difficult for you?
5. What websites do you use to book your travels?
6. Have you used any websites for travel booking where you’re booking flights, hotels, etc. all at once? Why or why not?
7. What features do you like most/least about them? Why?
8. Are there any other features that you use on these booking websites?
9. Are there any ways you are involved or would like to be involved in social causes you are interested in?
10. Do you think you’re a socially responsible traveller? What makes you believe so?
11. How does that social responsibility apply to your travel booking experience?
12. What brands/companies do you respect that have social responsibility initiatives? Why do you respect them?
13. How would you react to social responsibility on travel booking websites?
14. Do you have any examples of content you’ve engaged with on these sites? Written or otherwise?

FINAL THOUGHTS:

• Is there anything else you wanted to mention that we haven’t discussed yet?

FOLLOW-UP & NEXT STEPS:

• To reiterate, everything we discussed will remain confidential and is only going to be used for research purposes.
• If I have any follow up questions, is it okay for me to contact you using the same email/phone number?
• Thank you so much for your time, and please let me know if you have anyone in mind that would be willing to sit down for an interview with me.

I interviewed one participant over the phone and took some notes during interviewing. It was my first time interviewing participants remotely. I wasn’t able to observe the body language and engage in the conversation the way I’m used to when I conduct interviews in person. I came to a conclusion, that interviewing remotely might be a challenge, because some people are not as open over the phone as in person. Fortunately, my research participant was willing to answer my interview questions in an extremely comprehensive way.

After conducting 4 interviews independently, we gathered observations such as likes, dislikes, quotes and behaviors of each participant of our user research. We wrote down one observation per post-it note. We placed them into groupings based on similarities and trends.That synthesis helped us create an Affinity Map.

We have worked on Affinity Map on the whiteboard for 2 hours on campus on Friday night. We made pictures of the groupings and later remotely collaborated on coming up with “I” statements .

We spent the weekend analyzing and synthesizing our data. On Monday we recreated 8 “I” statements on the whiteboard that each of us worked on independently during the weekend. We did our best to make our “I” Statements sound very much personal reflecting our users feelings about their travel booking experience.

Below is the list of “I” Statements we ended up creating.

1. “I travel mostly for pleasure and personal reasons.”
2. “I don’t like getting frustrated during my travel booking process because of website functionalities.”
3. “I like being able to customize travel options around my needs.”
4. “I like add-on features and offerings that enhance my travel booking experience.”
5. “I pay attention to my involvement and businesses involvement in different social causes.”
6. “I am price conscious and take advantage of deals when booking travel.”
7. “I don’t prioritize social responsibility, especially when it comes to travel.”
8. “I use multiple websites to book travel.”

We also came up with a few insights from our Research Synthesis:

• Our users want to find the best deal without sacrificing quality and personal needs.
• Our users want a travel booking experience that’s detailed enough to meet their needs but isn’t too overwhelming.
• Our users indirectly support social causes, but feel like they could do more.

Based on our user research synthesis, we created a Persona, a fictional character representing major insights and “I” statements.

Having George in mind, we imagined the process he goes though in order to accomplish a goal of booking a bundle trip including the touchpoints with and
outside of your the website he uses. That helped us create a Journey Map. We wanted to understand the existing process and discover George’s pain points as opportunities for improvement.

Starting with the journey map, we were too technically focused. That’s why the journey map turned out more like a user flow. In retrospective I realize that had we leant into George’s emotional behaviors and intent, we would have better informed how we came up with our feature. This way we would have understood how he feels when booking travel and why he makes the decisions he does.

George loves to travel in his leisure and find great deals that meet his needs. Aware of his privileges, he moderately supports social causes but feels like he could do more.

How might we help George save time booking his trip while also creating an option to explore socially conscious opportunities?

Moving to the Design Studio, we had 2 round of sketching. We focused on George, his needs, goals and pain points. We also had a scenario in mind to design for.

First Round

• We each sketched as many feature ideas as we could within 5 minutes, keeping our persona’s needs, pain-points and behaviors top of mind
• We pitched our ideas to one another and provided feedback, utilizing shared inspiration for iterations

Second Round

• Each person then created one best version of their idea and pitched to the group again
• We collaboratively decided on the best solution by infusing shared elements of our designs
• In the end, we decided on implementing an eco-friendly filter option to the site in order for users to quickly and easily decide between environmentally sustainable hotels

The feature we decided on was a checkbox on the homepage for George to check in case he wants to see eco-friendly options only. We also ended up creating a tree icon indicating a hotel’s environmental policies.

We used the Moscow method to figure out the simplest way to satisfy both the business need and George’s need to keep to environmentally sustainable practices.

We tested 3 low-fi paper screens with 3 users to understand how easily people can interact with our design. All 3 users succeeded at task even though it took them some time to figure out what is displayed on the first index card to be able to find eco-friendly options. Our only area of improvement was to incorporate iconography or clearer language to clarify what makes particular hotels eco-friendly.

Once we went through low-fi paper prototyping, we moved to mid-fi prototyping. This stage allowed us to work out certain technical issues as well as give us insight into how we could improve our feature before building out our mid-fidelity prototype.

We prepared a Usability Test Discussion Guide and conduct a round of usability testing together. My role was taking notes during usability testing.

User goal: Complete booking a bundled trip including flight, hotel, and car rental from New York to San Francisco, choosing eco-friendly options.

Scenario: You want to take a week long vacation to California this summer. With flights, a hotel, and needing a car to get around, you definitely want to take advantage of a good deal when booking. You’d also like to make more environmentally conscious options if possible.

Task: Book a week long trip bundle from New York to San Francisco that includes your flights, accommodation, and car rental making sure you choose a sustainable hotel option.

Below is the link to mid-fi clickable prototype in InVision.

On the “Hotel info” page, users had trouble finding information about the hotel environmental policies, although they paid attention to the tree icon. Therefore, some context has been added to inform users about the hotel’s eco-friendly policies. In the hi-fi prototype, clicking on the tree icon on the “Hotel info” page leads users to “Popular property highlights” featuring “Onsite recycling” information. This way users will be able to access some details to understand what makes this particular hotel eco-friendly.

Testing mid-fi prototypes gave us some insights on some technical as well as design aspects of our solution. That helped make corrections and ultimately improve our design solution.

Overall, 13 hi-fi wireframes have been drawn in Sketch. We assigned certain screenshots to particular team members to work on wire framing independently first. Then we merged our wireframes into one Sketch file to refine them by making each and every wireframe look concise. 4 wireframes are annotated below showcasing a checkbox feature and a tree icon.

We had 12 minutes to cover user research, show Hi-Fi mockup and usability test findings. We were good with timing and received positive feedback from stakeholders.

Overall, we collaborated effectively as a team of 3 UX designers redesigning Expedia’s responsive website. The results of the final usability test proved that the mockup is functioning well addressing George’s need to keep to environmentally sustainable practices.

• In our journey map, lean into George’s emotional behaviors and motivations to better understand how he feels when booking travel and why he makes the decisions he does.
• Clean up wireframes to eliminate external factors during usability testing. A few users had trouble clicking on a hotspot because the hotspot was too small, and some users were focusing on the wrong content during our mid-fi testing so should’ve kept fidelity more consistent. These would eliminate errors that distract from the actual goal of testing.

• Include tree icon on confirmation page by hotel information. Including the tree icon on the confirmation page is an easy way to keep labeling consistent and remind users of their actions.
• Consider making icons more specific than the tree. We also might consider getting more granular than a general eco-friendly icon, like a recycling icon to better communicate what “eco-friendly” actually means in context of the hotel offerings.
• Either rephrase initial checkbox text, or apply eco-friendly filter across all booking options. Easy solution is to adjust wording of checkbox text. Larger solution would be to implement this feature across more than just hotels.