Converting curiosity into real bookings

While the purpose of the Bahrain Official Tourism Website was centred around answering the “Why”, the Travel Booking Fulfillment Platform is concerned with the “How” - how can we facilitate the creation of these memorable travel experiences?

The Existing Booking Engine

The existing design of our travel booking engine faces several design challenges that significantly impact its user experience. My first action was to conduct a Usability feedback/testing session to gain insight into these problem and then how to best approach my first design cycle.

This study employed a mixed-methods approach, combining both quantitative and qualitative research techniques. A sample of 20 participants, representing diverse demographics and travel preferences, interacted with the website to perform typical travel booking tasks. Data was collected through observations, user feedback, surveys, and task completion metrics.

Below you’ll find a breakdown of the key findings during the study.

Developer-driven deliverables on the other-hand such as Components Library work, faced stricter scrutiny in order to match our timelines and to remain within scope to prevent what I like to call “Creative Creep” - the addition of unforeseen design changes that affect the work and effort of other stakeholders (i.e. Developers)

A lot was resting on my shoulders, I found myself in both a designer,  product owner, and project management role - the latter two of which I was inexperienced in. I took the challenge with my head held high.

And it all went according to plan...

And it all went according to plan...right?

My plan had already begun encountering hiccups in the early stages of the project when it became clearer to me that I grossly underestimated how difficult it was to design with the varying quality of supplier data (i.e. Hotels and Stays) in mind.

Innovating in the travel industry has unique challenges due to its complex ecosystem of suppliers. Ensuring a consistent level of quality across various suppliers, who may provide data in an non-standard way, or imagery less than flattering, was a unique design challenge.

My mistake had been involving technical stakeholders too late into the design cycle. Initially, I was incorrectly operating under the assumption that all of my designs would be technically feasible, but given the variance in supplier quality, many of my designs had to be reimagined, ultimately extending the timelines of the project.

This design system includes a comprehensive set of guidelines covering typography, colour palettes, layout structures, and interactive elements, all defined in a way that they can be easily adjusted for each white-label instance.

The system uses modular components that can be seamlessly integrated or altered without disrupting the overall design integrity. This modularity means that adapting the prototype’s colours, styles, and even some functional elements to match a specific brand's identity can be done quickly and efficiently.

The lack of support for modern libraries necessitated the creation of custom components for the majority of the designs, and as a result an entirely new design system.

However, I was still able to make use of atomic Material Design elements and characteristics to expedite the creation of common component sets such as global buttons, links, etc. Why reinvent the wheel right?