Hi, I’m Alex

I drive business success by simplifying complexity, advocating for user needs, and aligning them with business priorities.

Marriott-Starwood merger

Combined 30+ hotel brands, 5,500+ properties, 110M+ loyalty members across three loyalty programs into one unified digital ecosystem.
Role: Lead UX Loyalty Designer, responsible for the digital loyalty experience, coordinating strategy and execution across enterprise-level departments

30 HOTEL BRANDS

3 LOYALTY PROGRAMS

GOAL HIGHLIGHTS

  • Unify loyalty ecosystem that combined Marriott Rewards, The Ritz-Carlton Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest

  • Streamline workflows for seamless account consolidation

  • Educate members in a two-year evolving rewards structure

  • Generate excitement for and alleviate fears of the new program

  • Build brand presence to the new program

  • Retain trust & loyalty throughout the transition

CHALLENGES

  • Large-scale loyalty programs made it difficult to educate members on changes in benefits and rewards

  • Enterprise website required comprehensive attention to include all touchpoints, large and small

  • Corporate structure required coordinating with multiple departments to align goals, workflows, and approvals

  • Legal deadlines necessitated thoroughly vetted upfront designs and documentation along with a swimlane workflow to ensure rapid turnarounds (Waterfall)

  • Team dynamics were a sensitive, everyday priority

Combining member benefits was one part of the massive undertaking.

Design Process

Discover

Define

Design

Ideate

TWO-YEAR PROCESS

Over the span of two years, the programs and rewards systems were merged, starting with account management.

User education, consistency, and intuitive flows were key to avoid customer service calls and to maintain member confidence.

A design evolution strategy was needed to help users navigate through changes as benefits and rewards were merged, updated, added, or phased out.

ACCOUNT MERGE HIGHLIGHTS

  • The first step was to excite and inform members on what to expect and how to prepare.

  • Reassuring members that the merger would be positive was a top priority in order to retain loyalty.

  • Effective wording created a positive experience for users.

  • Teams would gather in one ballroom so that cross-collaboration would be more efficient.

  • Sapient’s on site team took over development at headquarters, working through tight deadlines in limited space, electric fans were used to keep the air circulating.

  • Conducted user research and user testing with a dedicated User Researcher.

  • Brand guidelines were combined in a roll-out fashion.

  • Members were provided many educational opportunities prior to linking to ensure they understood everything and felt confident.

  • Stepper forms were limited to five bullets to make the process feel simpler, despite having more than five steps.

  • Common unhappy paths were integrated into the merge flow to preserve a streamlined process.

  • Edge cases were not integrated in the flow. Clear messaging was strategically placed in the process to minimize confusion for the happy paths.

  • Some rewards extended beyond the company’s loyalty program and required cross-company collaboration

  • Some complex awards took months to finalize, and members needed to be guided on what they were, where to find them, and how to use them.

  • Certain digital loyalty decisions were communicated to the Operations team to prevent customer confusion on property.

PRESS MENTIONS

”The [account linking] process is very simple”
- The Points Guy, 1.8M followers

RESULTS

  • Positive recognition by travel influencers for ease of use

  • Seamless transition with no reported issues or change requests

  • Scalable design foundation that supported ongoing enhancements and future loyalty updates

  • Legal deadlines were successfully met

  • Team dynamics were maintained or strengthened

  • Marriott Bonvoy is thriving as the world’s largest hotel loyalty program with 250M+ members

High-ROI through UX audit

Large-scale comprehensive audit of legacy loyalty touchpoints to identify areas of improvement.
Role: UX lead, uncover high-ROI UX opportunities through optimized product experiences.

HYPOTHESIS

Legacy UI and workflows may contain inefficiencies that represent opportunities for cost savings and improved user engagement.

GOALS

  • Discover actionable enhancements

  • Establish measurable KPIs for proposed changes

Some legacy designs hadn’t been updated for nearly a decade.

CHALLENGES

  • Large complex site and touchpoints make it impossible to check all places

  • Potential risks could arise from even the smallest of changes

  • Technical constraints prohibited certain enhancements

  • Cost-effectiveness was difficult to achieve

DESIGN PROCESS

The most effective process was to talk to people from around the company directly.

Design

Design

Collaborate More

Collaborate

HIGH-VALUE TARGETS

I identified three categories that had the highest ROI and focused on those.

  • Member Registration

  • Customer Care

  • Promotions

CHANGES

  • Streamlined workflows by reducing number of clicks

  • Removed a need for authentication

  • Reduced points of failure between members and customer care

  • Educated users on certain tasks and features across multiple channels

  • Introduced consistent language across channels

CASE STUDY

PROMOTIONS

Promotions are targeted and personalized marketing campaigns where not all members receive the same promotion, if any. One promotion can generate $50M+ in revenue.

LEGACY CONTEXT

The Promotions team requested a page where members could view promotions they’re eligible for, and register for them.

COLLABORATION (PROMOTIONS TEAM)
COMMON FLOW, 90%

  1. Member receives a promotion email and clicks the link

  2. Member authenticates

  3. Member clicks register on the Promotions page

  4. Member is successfully registered

DESIGN
IDEAL FLOW

  1. Member receives a promotion email and clicks register

  2. Member is taken directly to the success / fail page

COLLABORATION (DEVELOPERS)
AUTHENTICATION

  • Tells the system who is registering

  • Not used to determined registration eligibility

  • Not used to register the member

  • Not used for security purposes

COLLABORATION (LEGAL)
TERMS & CONDITIONS

  • Terms & Conditions should be available to the member prior to registration

  • Agreement to the Terms & Conditions is implied; no checkbox is required

DESIGN
SOLUTION

  • Attach account name to email link instead of authenticating

  • Bypass the promotions page and take users directly to success / fail page

  • Add Terms & Conditions inside email

RESULT

Single-click, no authentication registration

The original promotion registration flow required authentication and three clicks.

Collaboration with the promotions, development, and legal teams eliminated the need for authentication and simplified registration to a single click.

IMPACT

$125,000+

Annual cost-savings

+10%

Promotion registrations

-2 weeks

Customer support ticket resolution time

+3%

Member registrations

Data-Driven design

Directed data collection to generate insights that informed strategic design decisions across multiple projects and touchpoints.

Role: Lead UI /UX Designer, research and define critical user pain points, guiding a team of six to analyze data and shape design direction

USER RESEARCH

I began with qualitative research to understand users’ pain points and determine which numerical data to collect, guiding the design process.

  • Monitor online forums

  • Conduct influencer interviews

  • Solicit community feedback

  • Conduct competitor analysis

  • Use systems daily and extensively to build user empathy

  • Stay around the water cooler

I monitored online discussions regularly to capture user sentiment.

ANALYST COLLABORATION

I led cross-functional meetings with two data scientists, a doctor of mathematics, and three software developers, defining the design objectives while the team determined what data to collect to address them.

I grouped the population into seven macro groups based on skill.

APPROACH HIGHLIGHTS

  • Found cost-effective methods of user tracking

  • Analyzed behavioral data to uncover patterns

  • Grouped users logically based on data to inform design for each segment

  • Detected areas of largest user drop off

  • Conducted user testing via community outreach

  • Collected user feedback on their perceptions of the changes

  • Took educated guesses

DESIGN PROCESS

Research

Hypothesize

Design

Test

CHANGE HIGHLIGHTS

  • Map personas in real-time to deliver targeted, custom experiences

  • Developed extensive new content to engage a wider audience

  • Improved and future-proofed the matchmaking system

  • Created new UI to guide and incentivize players

  • Expanded on the most popular rewards and introduced complementary ones

  • Reworked social features to maximize and maintain interactions

Churn in the bottom 3% was high possibly due to lack of positive reinforcements, low win rate, lack of interest in competitive play, or other unknown reasons.

CASE STUDY

COMPETITIVE PLAY

Ranked play was a key staple of the product. Competitive gaming in the first installment was so popular that it helped spark today’s $6B+ eSports industry and even played a microeconomic role in lifting Korea out of its 1994-2000 recession.

ANALYSIS

  • USER RESEARCH: Lower-skilled players found the ranking system frustrating.

  • HYPOTHESIS: The system experienced recursive churn as lower-end users along the normal distribution stopped playing.

  • DATA: The lowest 5% saw little reward for wins despite skill gains, resulting in attrition.

  • DATA: Over time, the normal distribution shifted in a way that disadvantaged the lower half in terms of rewards.

SOLUTIONS

  • Provide more positive reinforcement for the bottom 25% of players.

  • Automatically readjust the normal distribution every three months to maintain the desired experience and future-proof the system.

  • Hired a new game designer to create a low-pressure content, encouraging players to stay engaged in the game and possibly return to competitive play.

8% of the users received a disproportionately high share of development effort.

This YouTube video highlights changes and reasonings behind them. Later, I gave a similar presentation at the Wharton School of Business on gamification.

Added rewards for eSports-focused personas.

Launched a major casual content initiative with a new designer on the team.

RECEPTION

YouTube comments show user excitement over some upcoming UI changes over social features and content for casual personas.

RESULTS

+40%

User retention

+600%

User engagement

88%

Metacritic score

SKILLS

User Interface Design, Interaction Design, ADA compliance, 508 Compliance, WCAG Compliance, Wireframing, Prototyping, Responsive Design, User Interviews, Usability Testing, Journey Mapping, User Flows, Personas, User Profiles, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Agile, UX Writing, Gamification, Information Architecture

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CAREER HIGHLIGHTS