In the world of travel, user experience is king; customers planning a trip are looking for the easiest, most effective experience while they prepare for points of friction inevitably found elsewhere in the process. With this in mind, the rise of UX has impacted the world of online travel agencies (OTAs) especially hard, turning a seamless customer experience into an absolute necessity.
In a conversation during Forrester’s CXSF 2016 conference, Expedia VP of User Experience Scott Jones explained that creating the perfect user experience comes down to understanding the emotions of those that use it. Jones noted that emerging technologies have allowed them to analyze customer behavior on an entirely new level.
“With the explosion of growth in big data and consumer personalization, we know more about what people are doing than ever before, both at scale and at the individual level,” Jones said. “All that ‘what?’ was staring us in the face, but we weren’t able to look at the ‘why’.’’
By researching the motivation behind customer behaviors when engaging with the company, Expedia crafted the user experience accordingly. This research was done within an on-site innovation research lab, allowing the brand to examine technology like eye-tracking and facial movement recognition.
“We’ve always been big believers in listening and adapting, according to our customers,” Jones said. “But now we’re able to see the little moments that may not come to light simply from asking them what they want. It adds these extra layers of capability that are picking up insights that hadn’t been possible before.”
During the tense process of booking a trip, Expedia leveraged this emotional data to create moments of delight, removing a bit of the stress from travelers using the site.
An unforeseen side effect of this data-driven design is the potential for friction between researchers and designers, two groups that had previously worked separately but must now work in tandem to create CX that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
“It didn’t actually take much convincing,” Jones added. “When you see solutions that you didn’t even know existed before, it really does speak for itself.”
On the strength of this newfound emotional data, Expedia has found a way to go beyond basic surveying and design based upon the intersection of engagement and analytics.