Client
Travel Super Market
Agency
In House
Client Brief
An Easy & Useful Way To Search For Holidays.
Planning the ideal holiday can be a daunting task, often leaving you unsure if you’ve stumbled upon the best possible deal.
Revolutionise the holiday search experience, aligning it more closely with the expertise of a travel agent
My Role
Strategy
Design Direction
Design
UX Design
UI Design
Prototyping
Testing
In House Leadership (Built Capability)
My Creative Solution
I led the creation of “Super Search,” a suite of innovative holiday-planning features that blended deep UX thinking with emotionally resonant design.
From natural language search to an interactive travel map and the “My Suitcase” tool, we reimagined the journey to feel smart, human, and intuitive.
These innovations modernised the product, boosted engagement and conversions, and proved the impact of strategic UX-led innovation in a competitive market.
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 holiday search begins with a familiar feel, matching how people believe they search today. In reality, most platforms tell users how to search. This approach is different, more natural, mirroring how you instinctively explore options.
It prompts questions like: How far is my ideal destination? Am I craving warmth? What activities excite me? Am I drawn to coastal calm or urban energy?
By following the choices that arise naturally in your mind, it turns planning into a personalised journey shaped by your own aspirations and curiosities, offering a more mindful and tailored way to discover your perfect holiday.
Natural Language Search
Imagine planning a holiday with the ease of a casual conversation. Inspired by the natural flow of Google’s long-standing search, you simply type your vacation aspirations in plain language, and tailored results appear.
It feels familiar, yet it goes further. Drawing from a rich holiday database, the system anticipates your needs, suggesting refinements or alternative options linked to your keywords. Each prompt helps you explore new possibilities, turning a simple query into a richer, more personal journey. Finding your ideal getaway becomes as effortless as saying what’s on your mind.
Chat With A Travel Agent
Booking a holiday once meant visiting a travel agency or browsing Ceefax in the 1990s. Travel agents remain, now often linked with luxury and personalised experiences.
This concept imagines a conversational bot in that role, turning trip planning into a natural dialogue that suggests destinations, refines options, and responds like a human. It combines technology with personal service, offering the warmth and expertise of a travel agent in a seamless digital experience where journeys are shaped through conversation.
Information To Hand
This concept uses existing technology to transform Travel Supermarket’s static results into a more intuitive, user-friendly experience. Travel “cards” were redesigned across all channels with clearer organisation, integrated maps, and improved detail layout.
Rather than forcing users to dig through results, essential information is presented clearly and accessibly, supported by visual aids for faster decision-making. It is a streamlined approach where clarity and ease of use are at the heart of the travel search experience.
My Suitcase
The launch of My Suitcase turned an idea into a powerful tool, driving a fourfold increase in customer value through conversions.
It allowed users to curate search results, acting as both a basket and a bookmarking tool. Travellers could gather, organise, and revisit preferred options at any time, making decision-making easier and more personal. Sharing features added a collaborative layer, bringing others into the planning process and creating a sense of ownership over each journey.
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
The research objectives were achieved through a series of 12 one-to-one lab-based sessions. Each session lasted up to 60 minutes.
The structured sessions commenced with a brief opening interview, followed by core tasks, and concluded with a short closing interview to summarise the participants' experiences.
To ensure balance, the order of site presentations was counterbalanced, with half the participants using the new site first and the other half starting with the existing site.
Moderation Style
Participants were initially prompted to conduct a holiday search on TravelSupermarket, sharing their thought processes aloud. Emphasis was placed on not spending excessive time on third-party websites, allowing for a natural flow of the user's experience.
Once participants found a suitable holiday, they were guided back to the search and results pages to test key functions aligning with the research objectives, such as filters.
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.