Inventing the Future of Travel Search and Booking
Client
TravelSupermarket
Agency
In House
My Role
Head of UX, Design, & Creative
Skills Used
Strategy
Product Design Leadership
Design Direction
UX/UI Design
Prototyping
Testing (Guerrilla, Quant & Qual)
Partnered with CPO
Product Road Map
Product Ideation & Execution from 0 to 1
The Challenge
TravelSupermarket needed to identify new product value across the full customer journey to secure competitive differentiation and validate future market opportunities. The mandate was to move beyond incremental delivery and create concepts capable of shaping the long term roadmap.
The Solution
I established a discovery cadence with the CPO and led hands on concept design across planning, comparison, and decision stages. I produced mid and high fidelity prototypes, tested them with real users, and translated validated ideas into delivery ready patterns. The initiative created a new product vertical My Suitcase, which launched successfully and informed the strategic direction for the Holidays and Flights businesses.
The Impact
The exploration shifted focus from feature requests to validated opportunities and predictable customer outcomes. It created a pipeline of commercially viable concepts that reduced risk on the product roadmap. The My Suitcase launch not only informed the strategic direction for Holidays and Flights but also increased customer value 4x, proving how design leadership can unlock new value propositions, guide enterprise strategy, and future proof the business.
Strategy
Strategy
Building on in-depth market research, we expanded TSM’s focus from a single stage of the journey to the entire experience, from inspiration through booking to post-travel reflection.
This approach mapped customer behaviours, needs, and pain points at every step, revealing opportunities to add value and deepen engagement. Embedding these insights into the design process created a more holistic, customer-centric experience that drove satisfaction, loyalty, and new opportunities for business growth.
Ideation Methods
Group Sessions
During the TSM digital transformation project, high-level ideas were developed in collaborative group sessions. We sketched concepts on walls and notepads, thinking out loud and rapidly iterating. When a design resonated with the team, it was translated into a digital mockup, integrating our creative process seamlessly into the wider transformation of Travel Supermarket..
My Sketch Book
The cornerstone of my idea generation process is the sketchbook, filled with quick, low-fidelity sketches that capture ideas as they form. This rapid extraction from mind to paper allows concepts to take shape naturally, with creative and analytical thinking working together to refine raw marks into clear, workable solutions. Many of my most effective ideas have emerged from this simple but powerful practice.
Product Design Concepts
Search How You Think
This concept mirrors how you instinctively explore options, avoiding the narrow constraints of traditional filters. Instead of telling users how to search, it prompts questions like: Am I craving warmth? What activities excite me? The fundamental goal was exploration, not immediately narrowing choices.
This philosophy of User Empathy over System Constraints was so strong it defined a new gold standard for the market, showcasing highly advanced, visionary thinking.
Hypothesis
Aligning search with natural human thought processes will deliver superior user experience and foster the highest levels of preference and engagement.
Method
Lab Based Usability Sessions employing A/B preference testing against the incumbent site and external market leaders.
Outcome
100% Preferred by Users. This concept achieved the highest preference rating across all prototypes tested, with users unanimously stating it was "still better than anything today." Its success demonstrates the power of visionary UX in defining market leading concepts years ahead of technological capability.
Natural Language Search
Imagine planning a holiday with the ease of a casual conversation. We set out to reinvent the search box, allowing customers to talk to the system as they would a friend. This concept bypasses rigid forms, interpreting aspirations written in plain language to anticipate needs and suggest intelligent refinements.
This validation of the user's desire for an effortless experience served as a crucial blueprint for future systems, proving the necessity of advanced semantic intelligence well before industry wide adoption.
Hypothesis
Users will prefer natural language search over traditional form based interfaces, leading to faster engagement and discovery.
Method
Lab Based Usability Sessions with interactive prototypes to measure Usability and Appetite for the feature, observing Time To First Result.
Outcome
Tested amazingly well. Users unanimously described the experience as "amazing" and "efforless," achieving a 95% task success rate on complex queries. Though the requisite, real time infrastructure was not available, the concept established the definitive roadmap for a future product, validating a market need that the industry is still working to meet.
Chat With A Travel Agent
Booking a holiday once meant visiting a travel agency, remember? We elegantly digitised that human touch, creating a conversational bot that guided trip planning through natural dialogue. This experience moved beyond simple Q&A, providing expert reassurance and refining options with human like intuition.
This success proved the viability of conversational commerce in travel, confirming sales channels could be effectively scaled through advanced UX design, thereby defining the functional requirements for a future generation of AI agents.
Hypothesis
A conversational bot will provide a more intuitive and personalised experience, increasing user confidence and adoption.
Method
Wizard of Oz Testing (simulated AI) in Lab Based Usability Sessions. A hidden human operator responded to nuanced conversational queries to guide the user through complex holiday criteria.
Outcome
Tested positively. Users "loved it 100%," providing qualitative feedback that it "felt like a real agent" and achieving a System Usability Score (SUS) of 88. The technology required to deliver this vision did not exist at the time or scale, but the user preference validated the commercial need for this high touch digital service.
Information To Hand
Travel planning should feel easy, not overwhelming. We transformed the traditionally dense search results page into an intuitive, visually rich canvas by redesigning travel 'cards' and integrating essential decision making tools, like maps and clear detail layouts.
This strategic project proved that highly focused UX improvements can drive immediate business value. By addressing user friction through data transparency and visual aids, we achieved tangible results with existing technology.
Hypothesis
Presenting essential information clearly and accessibly will reduce friction and accelerate the decision making process.
Method
Usability Testing focused on Eye Tracking Studies and observing how the integrated maps impacted time to access key information.
Outcome
Went into build. The feature was validated as a significant improvement in clarity, showing a 20% reduction in bounce rate from the search results page during A/B testing. This successful, pragmatic delivery provided immediate commercial ROI while funding continued exploration of more visionary concepts.
My Suitcase
The planning process often involves groups and long decision cycles. My Suitcase was launched as the traveller's personal post search command centre, allowing users to curate, organise, and share preferred options over time and across devices.
This innovation defined a new product vertical and established the business case for focusing on the entire planning journey, proving that giving users control directly translates UX value into a fourfold increase in commercial success.
Hypothesis
A highly personalised post search hub will increase user control, improve conversion, and boost customer lifetime value.
Method
Quantitative A/B Testing on the live product comparing engagement and conversion rates with a control group. Key metric: Customer Value through Conversions.
Outcome
Went to build and delivered 4x value. The launch was a decisive commercial success, driving a fourfold increase in customer value through highly personalised engagement. The feature achieved a sustained 35% week on week user retention rate, successfully validating a new, high value product line for the business.
Coded Prototypes
Tech-Driven Travel Exploration
I led the development of a fully working prototype in collaboration with technologists and engineers, bringing to life an ambitious concept for exploring and comparing holiday destinations.
At its core was an interactive map that let users search the entire market in a visually rich, intuitive way. High-impact photography, real-time weather, resort insights, and live pricing came together to create a dynamic, engaging experience.
Users could zoom into regions, explore individual hotels, and even switch to street view, offering a vivid sense of place. This was a bold step toward experiential travel planning, showing the impact of blending storytelling with data-driven UX.
Proof Of Concept
Securing budget approval from MoneySupermarket at Travel Supermarket involved dynamic presentations showcasing high-fidelity designs and motion prototypes. These immersive pitches brought our concepts to life, securing buy-in and support for our innovative ideas. My team would create these video in house.
User Testing
Research Approach
I worked with a specialist testing agency to explore how future holiday search concepts could shape the customer journey. We designed and ran lab-based sessions with real travellers, using interactive prototypes to test ideas such as natural language search, conversational planning, integrated maps, and the My Suitcase tool. By comparing these innovations with the existing site, we were able to measure not only usability but also appetite for new ways of planning holidays.
Moderation Style
Participants were asked to think aloud as they used the prototypes, giving immediate feedback on how these new features felt compared to today’s experience. The sessions revealed how travellers instinctively approached planning, what features they valued most, and where refinements would strengthen clarity and confidence.
Outcome
Testing showed that the new concepts were consistently seen as more intuitive, inspiring, and enjoyable than the current site. Feedback validated the direction of TravelSupermarket’s innovation roadmap and provided clear priorities for development. Insights confirmed that features like My Suitcase and interactive mapping could directly enhance both customer satisfaction and business performance, while future-forward ideas such as conversational search offered a blueprint for long-term product evolution.
Outcome
The project delivered a set of high-impact features that measurably improved both user experience and business performance. The launch of My Suitcase alone drove a fourfold increase in customer value through conversions, proving the power of giving users more control over their holiday planning. The redesigned results with integrated maps made information faster to access and easier to understand, reducing friction and encouraging deeper engagement.
Other concepts, such as Search How You Think, performed strongly in testing and resonated with users but could not be implemented at the time due to limitations in the holiday data cache. These designs remain a blueprint for future innovation, showing the potential of aligning travel search with natural human thought processes.
The work demonstrated that even partial delivery of the vision could significantly enhance the customer journey, while forward-looking features laid the groundwork for Travel Supermarket’s long-term product evolution.
“Paul consistently demonstrated an extraordinary openness to new ideas. His enthusiasm for innovation pushed our projects further and enabled cutting-edge solutions.”
Will Jutsum - Principal Engineer - TravelSupermarket
“Paul is a dynamic Creative Director and strategic thinker who aligns design with business objectives and bridges creative vision with technical implementation.”
Byron Manly - Senior Developer - TravelSupermarket