Certain parts of this portfolio are blurred or edited due to NDAs with previous clients, to protect sensitive information and proprietary designs. If you’d like more details, feel free to reach out!
Unlocking and scaling online payment solutions in new markets
Booking.com, a global leader in digital travel, uses its FinTech business unit to drive innovation and cut financial friction in travel transactions. Over two years, I contributed to designing a global payments process for hotels, crafted to be both scalable and finely tuned to local needs.
Building a team to improve the payments experience
At the end of 2018, I joined Booking.com’s FinTech business unit as a Team Lead. My role involved forming a new team to enhance the payments experience for accommodations on the platform. Over two years, I led multiple projects aimed at bringing new payment products to market and improving the user experience. This required a continuous design process.
Understanding global and local payment challenges
I began by conducting comprehensive research to understand the problem space, connecting dots between various data sources, and interviewing end-users, stakeholders, and colleagues from product, marketing, engineering, and data science teams.
Mapping the journey
This discovery helped create a visual representation of the partner’s journey, identifying key pain points and emotions. A major insight was that different types of accommodations have very specific payment needs, making it essential to create a locally relevant sign-up process.
Crafting a tailored onboarding experience
I organized multiple creative workshops involving brainstorming, storyboarding, card sorting, critiques, and co-creation sessions with my team, end-users and relevant stakeholders. After the ideation phase, we evaluated the ideas and, through facilitated sessions, selected the best ones.
I started designing a new sign-up process, working closely with UX writers and product marketing managers. The end result was a customized onboarding journey, offering step-by-step guidance tailored specifically to our partners’ needs.
Testing the prototype with hotel partners
To test our prototype, the team and I visited hotel partners in Bangkok. I led the research effort, interviewing 15 hotel employees over four days to gather valuable market insights. These interviews were transformed into key observations, actionable insights, and user stories that guided our next steps.
Visualizing research findings through storyboards
I created storyboards from user research to communicate our findings to stakeholders and align the team . These storyboards also included recommendations for optimizing the user flow. With everyone on board, I designed the necessary components, enabling us to tailor the experience to partner needs, local regulations, payment methods, product options and services.
Testing and adapting for different markets
We first tested our new sign-up flow in Thailand and Malaysia. Adapting the flow for each country’s regulations, taxes, and payment methods led to increased adoption and compliance across various markets, proving the effectiveness of a scalable, yet locally relevant, payment solution.
Impact
- Adoption increased in Indonesia from 58% to 76%
- Growth in Spain by offering a new pay out method
- Enabled payments in India to meet tax regulations
- Tested and learned in strategic markets like China.
- Unlocked payments in the United States
My role
- Leading a data-driven, iterative design process
- Facilitating co-working workshops with stakeholders
- Designing high-fidelity prototypes
- Developing a componentized framework and MVP
- Conducting user interviews and usability testing