Travel Republic - iOS, Android Application, Website & Responsive Emails

Role - Lead UX Designer
iOS & Android Application

Key role responsibilities. Travel Republic had never released an App before and wanted to expand their horizons and reach out to the App market. I was given full control on what was to be our B2C App. It had to be made available to all our international markets.

I envisioned an App that would offer discovery and exploration of the world, an experience that gently guided the user to find new and exciting destinations via an interactive map. The map would display flight paths from each destination and show hotels plotted in the chosen region of the world.

As the Lead UX Designer I had to brainstorm, create storyboards, sketch user-flows, produce lo-fi interactive wireframes that were prototyped and UAT’s. These processes helped craft and evolve the UX whilst also illustrate my vision for the App to the key stakeholders and team. I and the team of talented developers got together with the key stakeholders and agreed the minimal viable product. Set about sprints to achieve our end goal and align on the ways of working. The next stage was to create the high fidelity UI designs whilst working closely with the development team to create more sophisticated prototypes. This not only helped the developers in how the design should be presented but also was a great way to show the key stakeholders how we had progressed with the UCD and this gave them a design they could feel and interact with on phone and tablet. I then set about UAT, setting tasks and analysed the outcomes, a written report to document my findings. After some iterations to the UX we set about more testing to validate those iterations.

In late December 2014 the first version of the iOS App was released and since that time, we have also released new versions with more features. The Android App (v1.0) was released in February 2015. Both Applications have been a massive success and a great return of investment, we still have many more features, design iterations, products, animations and interactions to add and fine tune. We have had positive feedback from all angles, firstly our customers, directors of Travel Republic, key stakeholders and also very positive analytical data.

Web - Manage Your Booking & Holiday Extras

When a user books with Travel Republic they're given access to the account section where you can manage their booking and be able to add extras products and services. This system had issues and nothing seemed to be intuitive for the customer. In summary, there was a customer relation issue and a drive from the business to create more revenue without compromising the user experience.

I had the task to create a solution that not only catered for the user but also suggested other products that may be of use to the customer depending on their booking.

After much deliberation and brainstorming a UCD was created, it had to be clean, clear and precise by minimising all the unnecessary noise that distracted the customer from their main goal. The design consisted of notifications not only within the interface but also reminders were sent to the customer by email, keeping them informed if anything else was needed to complete the booking. Some features were already in place in the old system but were not being utilised by the customer, again I had the task to make the system more user centric.
Once the experience for the user was addressed, my attention was diverted to the cross-selling products; these were important products the business wanted to highlight. I and a developer worked in collaboration and created a simple algorithm to offer suggestive products based on their original booking, the UI consisted of a product name, price and strong CTA.

The new UX and User Centered Design was rolled out. As a result of this major re-design the number of calls to the customer relation team had dropped and the business began to see more products sold week-on-week.

Responsive Emails - Sales & Booking

TR sends customer e-mails frequently, this channel is a very forward facing platform for the brand. Not only are they the face for many sales but they are also meant to be informative for the customer in regards to a booking they have made.

TR wanted to drive more sales onto the desktop site and also produce focused e-mails.

I decided to not only design and produce several responsive e-mails from scratch (so that the process of sending out the emails was more efficient) but also strengthen the e-mails to be more brand focused. Responsive emails and fixed templates was the first for Travel Republic and they still use them to this day. As a result of the work that I achieved, the Click Through Rates have increased, and sale records have been broken year-on-year.

I also mocked-up an email communication section that would link to each user account that we have on record. This was only ever a proof of concept.