I was brought in to Wyndham to drive the UX design, lead the UI construction, and establish a UX/UI practice. I joined the company as they were undertaking one of their largest IT projects to date: Voyager. Voyager is a new platform to replace existing systems including a booking engine, customer management tools, an inventory management system, and various support applications. The project had some infrastructure and back-end pieces in place, but was just beginning the bulk of the design/build phase.
The Voyager project was split into 2 main tracks, a customer facing website (CUI) and an internal web app (TRIP). Both have similar functionality, but very different experiences tailored to the target audience.
TRIP
TRIP's main goal is speed. With millions of calls taken each year, a call center agent’s success is directly linked to call times. We were able to deliver a platform that not only reduces average agent call times, but lowered required training time, and improved employee morale. Our approach was heavily dependent on working sessions including both business stakeholders and a group of call center agents. We would elicit “what the application needs to do” from the business stakeholders and combine it with “how would you want it to do it” from the agents resulting in a an application that is both functional and usable.
As Senior UX/UI, my responsibilities included:
- Oversaw, reviewed, approved all design artifacts
- Participated in working sessions
- Lead review sessions
- Produced wireframes/creative comps
- Ensured UX during construction phase
- Drove UI code design
- Delivered HTML/CSS/JS
- Reviewed and approved all UI code
CUI
CUI’s main goal is to get owners on vacations. With strong imagery, clean visual design, and simple navigation, CUI succeeds at putting owners in the vacation mindset while performing many of the same tasks as in TRIP. We worked with business stakeholders, marketing, and brand departments to deliver the necessary functionality in an experience that appeals to a wide demographic of target users.
As Senior UX/UI, my responsibilities included:
- Participated in working sessions
- Produced wireframes/creative comps
- Ensured UX during construction phase
- Participated in construction, code reviews, and bug fixing
Establish a practice
Wyndham, specifically Wyndham Vacation Ownership, as an organization has been around for a long time, but as an IT organization, they are relatively young. The IT department prior to Voyager operated primarily as a “run” organization, keeping the systems up and making small improvements along the way. While the company was successful in this, it needed a culture shift to accomplish a project with the scale of Voyager. I was brought in as an integral part of this shift to not only work on the Voyager project, but also lead the transition in the UX/UI spaces.
Before I arrived, there was no formal UX/UI practice. Many business units had never been through UX design before and lacked the parameters of how to utilize the UX and UI teams. To solve this, I created a document outlining the activities and deliverables the UX and UI teams would perform/deliver during each phase of the SDLC. This allowed other departments to understand how, when, and why to engage our team during the design/development process.
I promoted UX standards focused on user centered designs in order to raise the level of the business' expectations as well as what is to be expected of the UX/UI Team. Drove to enterprise UX solutions through Shared libraries, Standard UX and visual design across applications, Tooling Standards, Documentation Standards, Process Standards, and coordination between Teams.
I elevated the quality of code through teaching, implementing coding standards, and code review. I brought in new technologies to develop standardized, modularized, and reusable code. Based on the evaluations of new technologies, we became a React practice.
I took an active role in building a great team. From the interview and hiring of employees, through the mentorship and development of their potential into skilled resources, I cultivated a team culture of learning and innovation with a true motivation to succeed.
Design Focus
A Shift in Company Culture
My experience from Nielsen & SquirrelMedia pushed me to be a catalyst for change at Wyndham. Lessons learned motivated me to shift the company culture to work like an internal design agency: design focus as a priority, not as an afterthought. Collaborators, such as the business, needed to understand that good UX did not come with added cost or time and could be and should be implemented from the start to demonstrate a higher expectation of "standard." Every application deserves to have good design. This shift became the realization that good design was possible and validated the need to continue to improve design company-wide.
