The Business

Arrivia is a loyalty and travel software-as-a-service business who provides solutions for premiere external and internal brands, including Amex, Westgate, Vidanta, iGo, Government Vacation Rewards, iCruise, and USAA. These brands fell under several different companies, which merged shortly before my joining the company. All of us have been working together to consolidate the code bases and user experiences (such as choosing the best experience of each respective product and then implementing that product’s APIs and design into the other brands).

My Role

I work as a senior designer to provide data-driven, user-centered solutions, while collaborating with developers, business owners, product owners, and directly with clients. Work includes:

• Gathering user data, coordinating with brand owners, creating user interview guides, interviewing users, creating user personas

• Research, UI mockups, and prototypes for new design needs (see other sections of My Work for examples of this type of work)

• User tests and A/B tests (with assistance from Optimizely and data team)

Persona Project: Defining Core Users and Needs

Kick-Off and Meetings with Brand Representatives

Our small UX team partnered with a 3rd-party design firm and worked closely with them throughout this process. The first step in the persona project required interviewing brand representatives within the company (these individuals work closely with our clients and their users). We narrowed down the users into 5-6 persona categories (per brand). At the same time, “tech track” conversations were happening on how to consolidate the tech stacks.

Create and Approve Interview Guides

For each brand, interview guides were created and run past the brand representatives.

Recruit Users for Interviews

I came up with several methods for recruiting users, and it took some trial and error to find the best one for each brand.

• Live Intercept (voluntary survey placed on site via Optimizely to screen users and gather their contact info)

• Direct email from the business (or client), for brands and users who are accustomed to a personal touch

• User testing with screeners

Interview Users

Interviewing users is the fun part! Several of us partook in leading and participating in users interviews.

Set Up and Review User Persona Guides

We organized common trends from the conversations and set up the personas documents. The personas were reviewed with brand representatives to verify that core users were not missing and the personas resonated. Revisions were made from there.

Enhance Personas with Quantitative Data

We worked with data leaders within the company to gather research about our users in a quantitative manner, so that the personas were not solely based on the users we interviewed. This enhanced the personas to represent the most accurate data around incomes, top locations, amount of travel, etc.

Launch Findings to Company and Use Data to Drive Product Roadmap

The findings will be shared company-wide and used primarily to direct the product roadmap and backlog (especially in regards to personalization), but also to train sales, improve marketing, and inspire empathy and awareness towards our users.