ALEXANDER SUN
I simplify complexity.
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For 15+ years, I’ve guided fellow designers and led UX strategy to drive business success by advocating for user needs and aligning them with business priorities.
FEATURED PROJECTS
LARGEST HOTEL MERGER
Marriott-Starwood Acquisition
Combined 30+ hotel brands, 5,500+ properties, 110M+ loyalty members across three loyalty programs into one unified digital ecosystem.
Role: UX lead, responsible for digital loyalty experiences
30 HOTEL BRANDS
3 LOYALTY PROGRAMS
GOALS
Unify loyalty ecosystem that combined Marriott Rewards, The Ritz-Carlton Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest
Streamline workflows for seamless account consolidation
Onboard members to the new rewards structure
Retain member loyalty throughout the transition
CHALLENGES
Complex loyalty programs made it difficult to educate members on changes in benefits and rewards
Large-scale website required comprehensive attention to include all touchpoints, large and small
Large corporate structure required coordinating with multiple departments to align goals, workflows, and approvals
Legal deadlines necessitated thoroughly vetted upfront designs with clear documentation to ensure rapid turnarounds (Waterfall)
The merge required supporting the above and more.
Design Process
Discover
Define
Design
Ideate
TWO-YEAR PLAN
Over the span of two years, the programs and rewards systems were merged, starting with account management.
Throughout the two years, 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 added, updated, merged, or phased out.
PHASED ROLLOUT OF FULL INTEGRATION
”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
Legal deadlines were successfully met
Scalable design foundation that supported ongoing enhancements and future loyalty updates
Team dynamix were maintained or strengthened
Loyalty Optimization Audit
Review loyalty touchpoints to find potential cost savings and opportunities for user engagement.
Role: UX Lead, find opportunities for high-ROI enhancements
HYPOTHESIS
Legacy UI and workflows may have inefficiencies
Using a UX lens could uncover overlooked opportunities
GOALS
Streamline loyalty workflows to reduce friction in key tasks
Modernize legacy UI to improve clarity, usability, and elevate brand
Establish measurable KPIs for proposed enhancements
CHALLENGES
Potential risks could arise from even the smallest of changes
Technical constraints prohibited certain enhancements
Cost-effectiveness was difficult to achieve
Some legacy pages and flows hadn’t been updated for nearly a decade.
DESIGN PROCESS
The most effective process was to talk to people from around the company directly.
Discover
Design
Collaborate More
Collaborate
HIGH-VALUE TARGETS
I identified three categories that had the highest ROI and focused on those.
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Member Registration
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Customer Care
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Promotions
CHANGES
Streamlined four-step process to single-click action
Removed the need for authentication for certain tasks
Reduced points of failure between members and customer care
Educated users on certain tasks and features across multiple channels
Introduced consistent language across channels
“REPORT A MISSING STAY” FEATURE
$70,000 in annual cost-savings
From 2 weeks down to 0 seconds in resolution time
IMPACT
$125,000+
Annual cost-savings
+5,000
Promotion registrations
-2 weeks
Customer support ticket resolution
+13,000
Member registrations
Data-Driven Design
Users are reporting pain points, potential missed opportunities
Role: Lead UI /UX Designer, research user feedback and find targeted solutions
USER RESEARCH
User empathy
User interviews
Community feedback
Influencers
Competitive analysis
ANALYST COLLABORATION
I worked with two dedicated data scientists, statistician, and two software developers and devised a data and design strategy.
Added additional user tracking
Used behavioral data to identify and group personas
Detect areas of largest user drop off
Conduct user testing
Gauge effects of changes
Gather user feedback on how they viewed changes
Map feedback with user feedback to gauge user perception against data
DESIGN PROCESS
User Research
Collaborate
Test
Design
CHANGE HIGHLIGHTS
Map personas in real-time to deliver targeted, custom experiences
Created new experiences to target high-churn personas
Improved and future-proofed matchmaking system
Added new reward systems for each persona
Created new UI to guide and incentivize players
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To reduce churn and future-proof the ranking system, we spent a massively disproportionate effort in designing and developing for 4% of the population.
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New reward systems were key to increasing engagement across all personas.
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A plethora of content and UI changes were geared to support less competitive personas.
CRITICAL RECEPTION
YouTube comments show user excitement over changes I led.
RESULTS
+40%
User retention
+600%
User engagement
GUEST SPEAKER AT WHARTON
After the release, I was invited as a guest speaker at the Wharton School of Business by Kevin Werbach, co-author of “For the Win”, to talk about leveraging game thinking for business success, a concept known as gamification.
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
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
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Marriott-Starwood Merger
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Guest speaker at Wharton School of Business on user engagement
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Top 100 & Top 300 most visited websites