Exquisite Escapes February 2024

Exquisite Escapes

Role

Researcher
Designer

Project Overview

Exquisite Escapes was born from an Attentive initiative, Product Design Immersive, where visual designers were given the opportunity to learn the ins and the outs of the Product Design team. This was a six-month long initiative and resulted in a select few designers transitioning to the Product Design team afterward.

Exquisite Escapes is the culmination of our learnings, findings, and collaboration over the course of the initiative. Exquisite Escapes is a conceptual boutique hotel chain that offers a (better) White Lotus experience. They struggle with a small team, high guest standards, and a lack of automation. With this information, our team hoped to redefine the travel booking experience.

Creating proto-personas and empathy maps guided out first bit of research: user interviews. We interviewed Exquisite Escapes target demographics who are DINKS (Dual Income No Kids). From here we identified pain points, opportunities, and started forming early ideas. Many "How Might We" statements, affinity and journey maps later we began wire framing!

Planning and booking group travel was a pain point we quickly identified with our users. Even if it was a trip with two partners, sharing and using rewards was difficult for them them to navigate and we saw an opportunity there. Additionally, our users told us that to them, luxury travel was created in the details. Customers just want to feel special.

Process & Research

With research conducted and ideas formed, we began building our wire frames and developing our happy-state user journey. Lo-fi wireframes eventually turned into hi-fi wireframes and then we were prototyping.

Based on our interviews and personal experiences, we found that when booking travel people tend to fall into different roles. One person typically takes on a host-like role, putting charges on their card, researching activities and making dinner reservations, while the the rest of the travelers simply pay the Venmo request. We found that these roles aren't a bad thing, we want to make the Host's life easier. Features like being able to split the cost in-platform, payment reminder nudges, and trip edit requests would solve this problem.

Wire Frames & Prototyping

This was a conceptual project so rather than send off reviewed designs to Engineering as we would do in most circumstances, we met with them to talk feasibility of a project of this nature and better understand what happens in this part of the design lifecycle.

I learned so much over the course of this project and got to collaborate with colleagues I have worked with for two years in an entirely new way. In participating in this program I was learned what the Product Design Lifecycle looks like from start to finish, hone my prototyping understanding, exercise leadership and operational skills, and strengthen relationships with the Engineering team.

Next Steps & Key Take Aways