Expedia Group
Enhancing Expedia Group's Reach: Integrating Social Media for Seamless Travel Planning
Overview​​
Expedia Group has been exploring multiple strategies to integrate its business lines—flights, hotels, vacation rentals, rental cars, and activities—into popular social media platforms.
The goal of this case study is to enhance users' ability to discover, plan, and book travel directly through these platforms, while also strengthening Expedia’s brand presence.​
Role
UX Researcher/Designer
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Qualitative and Quantitative Data, User Persona, Wireframe, Low Fidelity, Testing
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June 2023 - May 2023
Tools
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Miro
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Figma
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Canva
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Teams
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Outlook
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Google Doc
Data tools
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Figma ​​
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Miro
Team
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10 UX Students
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5 Upper Class
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4 Lower Class
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1 Grad
Timeline
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Overall: 3 months ​​
Background
Overview​​
Expedia Group, Expedia Group (EG) is a leading travel agency that helps connect travelers with Expedia's partners. Their mission is to facilitate global travel for everyone.
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I am half the design team working with Expedia Group
I am a Sophomore gaining hands-on experience as a UX researcher/designer with Expedia Group partnered with Purdue UX. I support my team across every aspect of our project and am responsible for being a facilitator during sponsors’ meetings and class presentations.​
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I've grown tremendously in this year, some key achievements of which I have listed below:
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Conducted quantitative research. which helped our team identify more targeted user groups and enabled all other teams to gain a better understanding of the problem scope.
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Implemented design sketches. helping our team generate more design ideas that could lead to potential solutions for improving our workflow, while also allowing other teams to gain visibility into our upcoming sprints.
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Improved usability across the platform. No usability tests were conducted by the external consultancy before the development handoff. Since establishing a design team, we have actively worked on conducting UX research and usability testing for all projects.
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Created user personas. which helped our team focus on the specific problems we aimed to solve.
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Developed wireframes and prototypes. which helped our team visualize the page flow and layout.
The Process
Design
Delivery
Discovery
What should we build next?
Research
Learn
Feedback
Understanding the Problem
Before Expedia Group assigned the project to our team, they had explored the idea of integrating their platform with social media to target young millennials. While they had considered several ideas, there wasn't sufficient research to understand what would drive the platform’s growth.
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I conducted research using scholarly articles and interviews with our primary users—young millennials—to uncover any pain points they experienced with travel agencies and to identify the social media platforms they rely on for travel inspiration and booking trips.
My research encompassed:
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Understanding the sources of travel inspiration (platforms)
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Analyzing how inspiration leads to purchasing decisions
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Exploring how users book their travel experiences"
Key Findings
After collecting the data from the user interviews, I conducted affinity mapping with my teammates to synthesize the identified pain points. We grouped these problems under common themes and platform features.
My teammates and I relied on creating a Journey map to guide the process and list the issues in order of priority. The journey map helped identify the stages needed to find a solution."​
Journey Map
A user Journey map was created to gain a better understanding of the trip inspiration, planning, booking, and posting processes. The user journey was divided into 9 phases. I worked on the first half of the phases, which included inspiration, research, planning, and booking. After completing this half, I switched to the other half to add my input. This not only helped prioritize and generate ideas but also shaped the roadmap.
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My teammates and I concluded that following these 9 phases would help create a smoother journey for our primary users (young millennials).
Figure 2: Contribution Image
Figure 3: 9 Phases
Narrowing down the scope of work
Based on the user interviews conducted with over 8 users regarding travel agencies, we identified the following key issues:
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70% of interviewees felt distrust toward social media influencers when it comes to travel inspiration.
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80% of interviewees said that recommendations from family and friends are more influential in their travel decisions compared to influencers.
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65% of interviewees indicated that having control over their itinerary would enhance their travel experience.
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60% said they prefer having rewards or incentives tied to their bookings.
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​90% of interviewees utilize the social media platform Instagram.
Wireframing the solution
Based on the above problems identified, my teammates and I worked towards addressing these pains by coming up with potential solutions through sketches: ​
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Uploading to tripboards
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cross-platform integration
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social media import process
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Expedia post trip sharing
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Creating social media posts with Expedia
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Figure 3: Sketches
​My teammates and I quickly mocked up some basic wireframes to gather feedback from our sponsors, the Expedia Group design team, and users on the overall layout and structure of the social media platform. This involved establishing a visual hierarchy and layout for the Expedia Group's social media component (Instagram).
The User Journey
Design Solution
Usability testing sessions were conducted with our primary users to validate whether the new designs would solve their problems. I wrote a script that included a scenario asking the user to open their Instagram social media page using the prototype and then follow the expected process.
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During the session, I observed how they interacted with the prototype and engaged with the audience. The usability sessions revealed that the design was more trustworthy and allowed users to have control over their itinerary. It was also easier for users to identify which widget they needed to click on for their social media journey.
High-fidelity
Exporting
Posting
Developing the designs
My teammate and I created high-fidelity mockups in Figma, then imported a document showcasing how the design was developed to allow our sponsors to inspect the file and send it over to the engineers.
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I worked very closely with the back-end team to ensure that the design solution aligned with the research findings. I also conducted a UX review of each front-end implementation to ensure alignment with the design before pitching it to the sponsors.
Result and Takeaways
After the design creation, my teammate and I received positive feedback from our sponsors after presenting our findings and solutions. Additionally, I received positive feedback from users about how effective this will be for them.
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Some key takeaways from this project are:
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Create a plan before starting a project. Having a plan helped us stay organized and ensured that every team member was on the same page.
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User testing doesn't end after development. Design is something you keep working on and improving while gathering feedback.
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Documenting the process is essential. It allows the engineers and sponsors to understand the goals, the reasons behind decisions, the methods used, and the results that led to the design.