Google Travel

I contracted with Google Travel to design user experiences for hotel searches and bookings within Google Maps. My role was to create and lead design solutions through business requirements and engineering constraints while meeting the needs of the end user.

Design Thinking Workshops, Android UI, iOS UI, Material Design, Design Systems, Prototyping, High Fidelity Design

A newly introduced Nearby Hotels recommendation module in the Explore tab in the Google Maps Android app was having flat to neutral performance. It’s the product team’s hypothesis that it should’ve performed stronger given its prominence and context. I was tasked to continue the next iteration of design.

My goal was to redesign the module so that it’s more meaningful and addresses the user’s needs.

After consulting with other designers in the space that have faced similar situations, I found that the problem was that results in the current module, weren’t satisfying the needs of potential bookers.

With this new context I planned a solution that would give tailored hotel results that solved for the specific needs of these specific users in Google Maps.

Rather than create another visual variation as originally requested by the project manager, I wanted to focus on defining this module's value to the end user. A user looking for hotels to book while in Google Maps on their phone would have a specific set of priorities. I discussed this more with the PM, and asked for metrics and findings from the research team on last minute bookers.

Metrics showed that last minute bookers are a large part of the user base and contribute to booking revenue. By understanding last minute bookers’ needs, we can surface hotel results that are more relevant to their needs than simply gauging what's close by.

Research team's findings on what drives last minute bookers:

With these new findings, I looked into how Google Maps data could accommodate for these priorities. Many of them aligned with pre-existing search filters patterns and could naturally be applied.

Before finalizing my proposed solution, I wanted to collaborate with the engineers since they’d have the best knowledge on the data and parameters to work from and what could be built within our timeline.

I led a 1 day session that empowered engineers with design thinking exercises that put them in the shoes of the user in order to solve this problem.

Utilize an existing filter pivot UI pattern to showcase last minute bookers’ contextual needs to fast track their bookings.
‍

• New Filter Pivots
  These filter pivots speak to the needs of last minute bookers in their hotel search.
• Justification Lines
  These add context to hotel results based on a user’s previous visits/saves.
• Improved Navigation
  Click through paths of hotel bookings streamlined for faster conversion.

Filters to be applied:

I presented my design in weekly meetings between design, engineering, and product stakeholders. A good recommendation from them was to integrate justification logic (short copy related to interaction history) into the design.