BeMyHotel Booking Case Study
This project is part of my UX diploma, where I designed a simple hotel booking website. The goal was to make booking a hotel easier and more enjoyable by solving common problems users face. Through research and testing, I created a website that helps users find and book hotels smoothly.
Project
BeMyHotel
UI / UX / Branding
Tools: Figma, MIRO, Illustrator, InDesign, Google Forms, PowerPoint
DESIGN PROCESS
Booking a hotel is an important part of a traveller’s experience, but many platforms make it complicated and frustrating. This can turn potential customers away and negatively impact their view of a brand.
For this project, I designed a hotel booking website that focuses on making the process easier—searching for hotels, comparing options, and booking rooms. I started by researching common user frustrations and expectations through methods like looking at competitors, surveys, and usability testing. With these insights, I created a simple, user-friendly prototype that improves the booking experience and eliminates common problems.
Research
My research focused on understanding users’ needs, behaviours, and expectations to create a user-centred experience. By gathering feedback, I identified key pain points and opportunities for improvement. This foundational research clarified industry standards and helped validate design decisions.
Competitive Benchmarking - Online Survey -Usability Testing
Analysis
I transformed raw data into actionable insights, creating a clear roadmap for the design process. This step allowed me to prioritize features and solutions that aligned with user goals and business objectives, setting the stage for an effective and focused design strategy.
Customer Journey Map - Flow Diagram
Design
With a user-centric mindset, I translated insights from research and analysis into tangible design solutions. Each iteration was crafted to be intuitive, aesthetically pleasing, and aligned with user expectations. The designs were then refined for testing, ensuring they were ready for user validation and feedback.
Wireframing - Prototyping - Annotations
The luxury hotel industry is fiercely competitive, and major brands constantly improve their digital platforms to provide exceptional user experiences. Analyzing top competitors like Four Seasons, Mr & Mrs Smith, Mandarin Oriental, and Hilton was crucial to understanding how to serve luxury travellers better.
Travellers seeking premium accommodations often prioritize ease of navigation, transparent pricing, and a smooth booking process. My competitive benchmarking revealed several trends and opportunities for improvement:
Navigation Visibility: While competitors generally have cstraightforwardnavigation, design elements like bold typography or cluttered room details can overwhelm users. A cleaner, more balanced layout would improve usability and clarity.
Intuitive Date Selection: While date selectors meet user expectations, adding features like confirmation buttons and improved closing behaviours could streamline the process and reduce errors.
Pricing Transparency: While price breakdowns are available, they are often hidden or unclear. Making pricing more prominent and transparent would ensure users understand their total costs early on.
Personalization: Websites like Mr & Mrs Smith excel at personalizing the booking experience and offering curated options, but their cluttered interfaces and slow load times detract from user satisfaction.
Efficient Booking Flow: Websites like Hilton and Mandarin Oriental have streamlined booking processes but often disrupt users with upsells or do not provide early enough clarity on pricing. Simplifying these flows could lead to a smoother experience.
Visual & Content Design: Brands like Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental showcase beautiful visuals but sometimes sacrifice speed and usability due to large images or minimal filtering options. A balance of aesthetics and performance could enhance user engagement.
Through this competitive analysis, I realized there’s an opportunity to differentiate by offering a booking platform with transparent pricing, faster load times, intuitive navigation, and personalized options that create a premium experience.
Online Survey
To better understand user behaviours, goals, and experiences, I conducted an online survey with 10 participants, collecting qualitative and quantitative data. The survey was designed to avoid bias and follow best research practices. Open-ended questions allowed participants to share honest thoughts without leading or influencing them. This approach provided valuable insights that helped me understand user needs and guide design decisions.
Customer Journey Map
Using hotel booking websites, I created a customer journey map to visualize users’ emotions and actions. It breaks down each step, from homepage visit to payment, highlighting goals, behaviours, and pain points. One key issue was decreased satisfaction during room selection due to unclear information and low-quality images. Adding user quotes helped keep the analysis focused on their needs and experiences.
Usability Test
I conducted a usability test with one participant on two hotel websites: Mr & Mrs Smith and Hilton. The participant had to complete booking tasks while sharing feedback on how easy or hard it was to use the sites. This test helped me find problems and sound features that could improve the design of my project.
Good pictures are essential for decisions: Clear photos of rooms and services help users feel confident.
Room options should be clearly named and explained: Users need short descriptions to compare rooms and pick the best one.
Filters, like price, make searches easier: Users like tools that help them quickly find the best options.
User reviews help build trust: Seeing feedback from others makes users feel more sure of their choice.
A map feature helps users understand the location: Maps that show nearby places to visit improve the experience.
Clear pricing is important: Showing all costs clearly helps avoid confusion and makes users trust the site more.
Flow Diagram
I used the affinity diagram method to organize data from competitive benchmarking, surveys, and usability tests into themes like homepage, search results, rooms, and payment details. Smaller clusters within these themes, such as search fields, images, and pricing, were also identified. This approach revealed patterns in user behavior and highlighted areas for improvement, ensuring the insights were actionable for the design process.
Affinity Diagram
To analyze the data, I used the affinity diagram method to organize and combine the findings from competitive benchmarking, online surveys, and the usability test. I grouped the data into themes, including the homepage, search results, rooms, and payment details.
This approach helped identify patterns in user behaviour and highlight areas that needed improvement, ensuring the insights were valuable and effectively guided the design process.
I created a mid-fidelity prototype to make the booking process feel realistic and ensure a smooth user experience. I refined the design through multiple iterations based on user feedback, addressing key pain points. The goal was to create a clear and intuitive flow for tasks like searching for rooms, comparing options, and completing bookings.
