Hotwire

2 UX Designers, UX Researcher, Product Manager, UX Design Manager, Director of UX, Copywriter, 2 Developers

UX/UI Design - Research and User Flow, Information Architecture, Branding, Visual Design, Campaign Development

4 months

Hotwire, the last-minute online travel agency owned by Expedia Group, wanted to launch their first-ever customer loyalty program, High Roller. This project aimed to brand and design the Beta (and eventually General Availability, or GA) loyalty experience for active customers with 3+ completed Hotwire bookings.

Hotwire was increasingly one of Expedia Group’s top-performing, smaller-scale brands. The parent company wanted to create a loyalty program for Hotwire’s customers, since many of their larger brands had done this successfully.

Hotwire had a small but loyal customer base, so enticing new users to become repeat customers was key. Much of this pattern was due to Hotwire’s business model - users book 4 or 5 star hotels for a fraction of the retail price, but hotel names are revealed after the bookings are completed. The hidden names allow high-end hotels to fill last-minute, unsold rooms.

Users who understood this quickly became repeat customers due to the high discounts - people love easy, cost-effective travel and will likely travel more when these factors are at play. However, many users did not know or understand Hotwire’s booking process and were therefore hesitant to take a risk on an unnamed hotel.

Through user research, we learned that once users fully understood the business model, they were more likely to: 1. book with Hotwire and 2. use Hotwire more frequently for last-minute bookings.

Create a branded loyalty experience that would retain existing customers by treating them as VIPs and offering them additional perks. This would increase the number of repeat customers (through education + perk offerings) once the program launched to a larger user group (GA).

The target audience for this project was the Hotwire user who fit into one of our main traveler categories:

• Enjoys deep discounts for last-minute travel plans

• Is on a budget + prefers flexible travel deals to planning a pricier, more conventional trip

• Is in a last-minute situation and needs a quick, affordable option

Our main constraint was that a simultaneous Hotwire UX/UI rebrand was in the works - it was unclear if/when it would be finalized. There were UX/UI aspects we’d been wanting to change, and building a loyalty program on top of them without making updates felt a bit risky.

Hotwire was a fairly small company and functioned like a startup in the sense that there was a lot of creative freedom to test designs and experiences. However, as an entire redesign was not in scope for this project, we were asked to be creative in building the loyalty program while still fitting it within the existing brand parameters.

The Design team received current Hotwire customer behavior + purchase trends from our UX Researcher, and program-specific perk details from the Product Manager.

I partnered with another UX Designer to do competitive research. We mapped out the current Hotwire user journey and where the desired loyalty features would ideally sit within the existing flow. We wanted to understand which stages of the user journey required or would benefit from a loyalty touchpoint - we landed on about 15, so we needed to design a cohesive experience for these varied placements to guide the user.

Using the mapping exercise as an outline, I began the branding + UI portion of the project. We needed an entire branded suite - logo, font choices, at least one icon, and branded colors + a gradient.

Hotwire was currently using a gradient for app-related content in many placements and channels, so it was requested that I create a similar but unique gradient for loyalty-only placements. I needed to create a visual system so users would recognize that they were interacting with a loyalty-specific feature.

The other designer had proposed gold branding, which I incorporated into my explorations, along with a purple branding driven by an earlier conversation about its association with royalty. In reviews, we learned that many associated gold with a glitzy, Vegas feel and that purple was a better fit. After many iterations and reviews, we had the fundamentals of a visual system.

We started to place copy into our visual elements and create hi-fi mocks for a more final UI look within our mapped flow. At the same time, I worked on the High Roller email campaign designs that would notify customers of their new loyalty membership.

With mocks, we evaluated our placements and branding to confirm both logic and design. We shared them with the Dev team to confirm everything was possible to produce, even though this wasn’t a big concern since the placements were straightforward. Through the hi-fi process, we realized there were a few visually overwhelming places that needed adjusting due to the gradient + icon combination.

After collaborating with the Copywriter to make adjustments, I presented our hi-fis to the larger UX team for final feedback. When looking at mockups for weeks, I found it so helpful to get other eyes on the project to spot things I might not have noticed.