The search functionality on Marriott.com had notable user experience issues. The calendar interactions deviated from industry best practices, causing difficulty in selecting dates efficiently. Numerous extra fields in the search form overwhelmed users. Inconsistency between the homepage search bar and the search results page, as well as a lack of visual continuity on the results page disrupted the search journey and negatively impacted the overall user experience.
The date selection in the calendar didn't match user expections, and went against best practices gleaned from industry studies.
The filters section was bloated and didn't surface commonly accessed filters.
The property cards lacked a clear information hierarchy and used available space ineffiently.
Through a collaborative effort with the product and development teams, we successfully improved the Marriott search experience by implementing several key design enhancements.
Extensive competitive research, and user testing of calendar interactions conducted through UserTesting.com further validated the best pattern for seamless date selection. We also updated the UI to create a cohesive search experience across the site.
By leveraging analytics data, we identified the most viewed fields in the product cards, allowing us to prioritize the most relevant information for users. We created a comprehensive card system which worked across list/map views and breakpoints.
As Marriott serves international markets, we needed to stress test the card system with multiple languages. I created a database of variables and leverged a Sketch plugin to rapidly float localized data into the cards.
