designing for immediacy

PowerPoint Presentation

Designing for immediacyAndy Braxton Director, Mobile Product Design15 April 2016

Confidential - do not distribute


Hello everyone.1

About me2Andy BraxtonDirector, Mobile Product Design Hotels.com (An Expedia Inc Brand)[email protected]@brackers


My names Andy Braxton Director of Mobile Product Design at Hotels.com. I manage a team of product designers specialising in Hotels.com native apps.2

Global hotel and vacation rental specialist85 sites in 60 countries50 million app downloads4.5+ star rating on both iOS and Android app storesOur apps serve our most loyal customers

About Hotels.com3


Briefly on Hotels.com apps

Global hotel specialistOur apps have been downloaded more than 50 million times4.5+ star rating on both iOS and Android app stores (proud of and is one of our key metrics)Our apps serve our most loyal customers (most are Hotels.com Rewards members). So its an interesting contrast to other platforms.A booking is made every 5.4 seconds on apps, which sort of makes me feel a little bit like I should be back at the office chasing up bug fixes.

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4Designing for immediacy


So I wanted to talk to you today about Designing for immediacy (END)4

5Mobile continues to change the way we interact with services.


Of course, Mobile continues to change the way we interact with services.5

6Our day is punctuated by a series of moments


Our day is punctuated by a series of moments, where we reach for the device nearest to us for to fulfill our needs. Most often our mobile phone. Our expectations of what we can do on a mobile are raising all the time, as new services emerge and the mobile platform matures.6

7SpontaneityBooking for same day or next day


And mobile has enabled a new kind of spontaneity. Theres plenty of spontaneous behaviour that we observe on Hotels.com apps. For example, 51% of bookings are for same day or next day check-in.7

8More interactionsFaster interactions


The way people interact with brands is fragmenting into a larger number of faster interactions.8

9Immediacy

RelevantFastFrictionless


And we expect each of these interactions to be relevant, fast and frictionless. And these are key UX principles when thinking about designing for immediacy. I want to take some time today to look at some recent work that weve been doing for our apps that touch on these three principles of designing for immediacy.9

Creating a relevant experience10


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Androidhome screenrefresh


Recently we undertook a redesign of our Android home screen. It was pretty dated and not really fit for purpose it was a static layout that wasnt really extendable. And above all we wanted to add more relevance.11

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Understanding needs


First of all we spent some time understanding what we felt were key needs for people opening our app at each stage of the travel lifecycle.12

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Scenario mapping


We then mapped that thinking into a plan for all of these different scenarios, describing what we thought were key user and business goals and ideas for how to serve them.13

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Flexible content structure + logic


We understood pretty quickly that we needed a flexible content structure in order to cater for varying needs across the lifecycle of someones trip.14

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We exhaustively mapped different contexts and states of content and actions that the user could take in each scenario.15

16Offline usage


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Enabler: Signing in17


18Enabler: Customer data


19Flexible UI Toolkit

Enabler: Flexible UI toolkit


Understand context and needsPlan to pre-empt needs (exhaustively!)Create flexible frameworks

Bonus: Connect your UX team to API teams upstreamDesigning for relevance20


Creating fast experiences21


Open app Book22


Recently we undertook a redesign of our Android home screen. It was pretty dated and not really fit for purpose it was a static layout that wasnt really extendable. And above all we wanted to add more relevance.22

23Response times0.1sThe limit for feeling instantaneousThe limit for not interrupting users thought processThe limit for keeping a users attention1s10sJakob N, 1993https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-limits/


When we started talking about speed in earnest not too long ago on Hotels.com a colleague reminded me of Jakob Neisens wisdom on response times, which he published in 1993 and which he states is based 23

24Time a typical use of your Wear app. If using it takes more than 5 seconds, you should think about making your app more focused.Design Principles for Android Wear, Google


I like this from Googles design principles for Android Wear. If your Wear app takes more than 5 seconds you should think about making your app more focused. So it seems like mobile is driving this limit for attention down. We all bemoan the amount of time we spend on our devices, so it seems a worthwhile aim to reduce the amount of time we need to spend looking at screens.24

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Start upsuper fast


Video of opening app = page transitions, skeleton pages, loading bar26

27Pushing onoptimistically


28Cacheing


29Prototyping

Enabler: Design Prototyping


Push on optimisticallyCreate perception of speedCache intelligently

Bonus: Motion design

Designing for speed30


Creating frictionless experiences31


32Late night inventory

Late night check-in


About 18 months ago we were able to start telling our customers which hotels you could check in at between 11pm and 5am, which is good news for people stumbling out of pubs at closing time and who have no idea where they are going to stay tonight. Its a great one for thinking about creating a frictionless experience youre in a pretty urgent situation so how do we create something really seamless and simple?32

33Strong patterns in data

1 night

Tonight bookings =


So we began by examining data for bookings for tonight and the early hours of the morning. And we realised there were these strong patterns in the data that we could cue off.33

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I would usually just do a quick bit of research as I just need a bed and don't really care as much about the facilities availableBacked up by qual


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Strongdefaults


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Your app bailed us out on two notable occasions where we were stranded in cities we were completely unfamiliar withFeedback


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Understand patterns in dataCreate strong defaultsAllow recovery

Bonus: Use intents / Integrate with 3rd parties

Designing for zero friction37


Help people enjoy more and work less!38


Pre-empting peoples needs and giving people what they need in a straightforward way means that they can enjoy more and work less.38

Thanks!39Andy BraxtonDirector, Mobile Product Design Hotels.com (An Expedia Inc Brand)[email protected]@brackers


My names Andy Braxton Director of Mobile Product Design at Hotels.com. I manage a team of product designers specialising in Hotels.com native apps.39

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