Company

Exclusive Resorts

Role

UX Design

Summary

I created the customer experience strategy the Source application.

Problem Statement

Exclusive Resorts introduced the Source application to allow members to plan their vacations and communicate with concierges when they were onsite. After a successful launch, Exclusive Resorts wanted to expand the features to include booking, ratings, and account management.

The Source Homepage

Project Goals

1

Provide a mobile experience to book travel

2

Increase user interaction with the location ratings

3

Create consistency throughout the application

4

Redesign the UI with the new Exclusive Resorts brand

Research Method

User Persona Icon

User Personas

Customer Journey Icon

Customer Journey

Feature Set Icon

Feature Sets

Design System Icon

Design System

Approach

Exclusive Resorts has a member advisory committee that provides input about business decisions. Interviewing each member, I was able to have a deep understanding of the user and their needs.

Key Focus Areas

1

What do use today in the current member portal?

2

How do you use Exclusive Resorts today?

3

What tasks do you complete outside of the member portal?

Core User Needs

"I need to book travel when I’m talking about it when my family"

Members talk about their next vacations when they are relaxing with their family. Using their phones, they would look up locations, homes, and availability. While being excited by the destination, they will want to see availability and book homes.

"I need to plan my vacation"

Members love that their account manager and concierge help them plan their experience. They want to be able to make requests to book activities and see their schedule before and during their stay.

"I want to see other member’s recommendations about locations"

Members can research things to do or restaurants to eat at, but they trust other member’s recommendations more. They want to be able to ask questions about locations and read reviews.

"I want to experience my vacation stress-free"

Members want to be able to make requests and not worry about it. Also, concierges wish to be able to update the members without bothering them.

Offsite innovation retreat

To kick off the project, stakeholders, developers, product owners, and designers did an offsite retreat to define the Source application. I led a session where we created the vacation lifecycle based on user needs.

Vacation Lifecycle

We broke the Source application into four sections: Book, Plan, Experience, and Share. Each section provided features based on user needs.

Book

Book available homes based on specific dates or book your favorite home when it becomes available.

Plan

Based on member recommendations and favorite past experiences, plan how the member will experience their vacation.

Experience

Communicate with the concierge on how the vacation is going and any requests needed. Also, start booking and planning the next vacation while enjoying the current vacation.

Share

Help other members enjoy their experience, make recommendations on destination amenities.

Design System

Exclusive Resorts rebranded and needed new UI elements. Working with the brand manager, I created a new design system that was scalable for development and consistent for user experiences.

The Source Design System

Results

    Creating an experience strategy based on a deep understanding of user needs created the foundation for lower-level feature creation and prioritization. It allowed the company to make confident decisions that their members would be highly satisfied and gain a return on investment.

Let's connect

I love discussing interesting ideas, new collaborations, or your next marathon (running or watching).

melissa@theliquidstudio.com

Info

Melissa Skrbic-Huss
Denver, CO

Phone

(720) 933-6872

Resume

PDF