Romie

AI-powered shopping & trip inspiration assistant

Romie’s mission is to empower travelers to find their next destination, book their trip seamlessly, and discover in-trip experiences.

Role

Lead Product Designer

Time

Nov '24 - Dec '24

Tools

Figma, Miro

We had an opportunity to simplify and enhance the traveler journey by providing faster insights, streamlined options, and personalized recommendations.

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Me!

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Kickoff

Our team kicked off a project with a two-month timeline dedicated to intensive design work. We structured the effort by dividing responsibilities between two designers, ensuring balanced workloads and clear ownership. To maintain alignment and quality, we scheduled regular design reviews throughout the process, fostering collaboration and continuous improvement as we worked toward delivering impactful results.

Entry Point

The challenge

Introduce Romie in a way that feels helpful, not disruptive, while encouraging engagement and building trust from the very first interaction.

The start

At the beggining of this project, the entry point featured a generic ChatGPT experience with three oversized buttons that didn’t align with our design system and cluttered the conversation pane. While visually inefficient, we recognized their value in educating users on how to engage with the assistant.

We decided to bring these educational starting prompts to the entry point.

How would we design this? We narrowed it down to 3 options.

✓ already in use throughout our conversational experiences

✓ would be familiar are reappear as an interaction in the actual experience

✓ heading and subheading allows for deeper content strategy

✓ a more eye catching design

✓ More of a visual cue that you're entering a chat experience

✓ text can show examples of sentences rather than prompts

As Romie was our first in-house step into the conversational AI space, we chose to run a variant test, releasing different versions to different users.

This approach allowed us to stay flexible and responsive in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Content & logic strategy

Visual strategy

The Outcome

Feedback

The challenge

Need a way to collect feedback from users about their experience with Romie that is not overly intrusive, gathers meaningful data, and is feasible to build for the quick timeline.

The start

At the conclusion of our brainstorming session, we found exit survey feedback would be the most realistic for our timeline and the least intrusive for our experience.

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Considerations for Feedback Flow

Substantial Interaction

Has the traveler engaged meaningfully with Romie, such as asking multiple questions or completing specific actions, to warrant a feedback prompt?

Content Engagement

Has the traveler interacted with features like saving items to trip boards or exploring recommendations, indicating deeper usage of the tool?

Trip Creation

Has the traveler demonstrated ongoing engagement by creating or discussing more than one trip, reflecting a broader use of Romie’s capabilities?

The Outcome

Cards

The challenge

Across different conversational experiences at Expedia Group, there are different ways we display the same information. If someone asks for hotel recommendations, depending on what chat interface you're using you may see a few different card layouts or even a wall of text with a lot of information. We needed a cohesive, scalable card system that would unify the visual language, enable reusability, and accelerate delivery across multiple surfaces.

The approach

To kick off the project, we conducted a comprehensive audit of our design card framework (DCF) and tools across Expedia’s various conversational experiences and product lines.

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Wireframes

I began by mapping out the essential content needed for each area—hotels, flights, activities, and more—identifying commonalities and drawing connections to ensure alignment. At the same time, I thoughtfully integrated unique information specific to each line of business, maintaining harmony within the overall design.

What we learned throughout this process was the importance of anticipating future needs while designing for the present. While we initially leaned into a horizontal layout that balanced visuals and content, we realized that the eventual addition of a call-to-action (CTA) would be better supported by a vertical layout.

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These cards are not standalone components, but as scalable solutions that could evolve with future requirements.

'By considering the long-term functionality of these designs, we positioned ourselves to deliver a more flexible and future-proof framework.

Tailoring Cards for Unique Business Needs

For Flight cards, we quickly realized that including an image would add little value and could even detract from the user experience. When travelers scroll through a carousel of these cards, a repeated image becomes redundant and unnecessary.

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The Outcome

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To see Romie 1.0 on your own, visit the homepage on the Expedia App.

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