Crafting A Unified Editorial Journey
Developed a cross-brand editorial design system to unify Expedia Group’s three leading brands—Expedia, Hotels.com, and VRBO—creating a seamless and cohesive editorial experience.
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My Role
Lead Experience Designer
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The Team
Product Strategist, Visual Designer, and Project Manager
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Timeline
A 12-week project plan for design system revolution and functional documentation
The Challenges
The current design system (MeSo) can't serve Expedia Group's leading platforms—Expedia, Hotels.com, and VRBO.
As a content strategist, I found the current design system:
01
Lack of options and flexibility – Limited component options led to redundancy on the same page.
02
Inconsistent image guidelines – Poorly defined ratios restricted image selection and required frequent resizing.
03
Copy constraints – The system didn’t account for variations in text length, causing layout issues and limiting content creativity.
As a business strategy, I found the current design system:
05
Weak conversion pathways – Limited touchpoints to guide users from editorial content to business platforms.
06
Inconsistent partnership integration – No standardized guidelines for incorporating branded content as partnerships expanded.
Experience Preview
Page Template
Homepage
Design System
Flexible Brand Theme Swap
Design Process
As the lead UX Designer
I led the UX design through a 12-week design sprint, taking ownership of defining requirements, shaping the UX strategy, creating wireframes and user flows, and documenting the final design.
Auditing the existing design system revealed two key challenges: unclear component use cases due to lack of documentation and inconsistent feedback from a large stakeholder group. To align priorities and establish a clear foundation, I hosted a workshop to gather insights on:
How stakeholder intend to use each component.
How users are expected to interact with these components.
I translated insights into wireframes, focusing on scalable templates and flexible components that work across Expedia, Hotels.com, and VRBO. These wireframes served as the foundation for the design system and ensured a seamless editorial experience.
We conducted two rounds of review to gather stakeholder feedback, incorporating perspectives from the content team, UX team, and development team. This process helped me validate and iterate on the wireframes, ultimately arriving at a solution that balances the needs of all workstreams and is technically feasible.
Final Design & Improvements
Highlights
01
Variable Module Selections
The new design system introduces Content Packages, Storytelling Toolkits, Features, and a Card Library, providing a versatile set of components tailored to different editorial needs. This flexibility reduces redundancy, allowing content strategists to select the most suitable modules for each page.
Highlights
02
Cross-Brand Module Adaptation
Modules were designed to scale effortlessly across all three brands, adapting to unique visual styles while maintaining consistent structure and usability. This ensured editorial teams could work from a shared system without sacrificing brand distinction.
Highlights
03
Contextual CTAs
Strategic placements of CTAs and cross-brand linking modules help guide users seamlessly from editorial content to business platforms, boosting engagement and conversion rates. For example, add a hotel card to link the user to the hotel booking site in the itinerary map module.
Highlights
04
Adaptive Image Framework
A flexible image ratio system ensures visual consistency across brands while allowing editors to select and crop images efficiently without manual resizing.
Functional Documentation
I collaborated with developers to determine the best approach for documenting user flows, interactions, and population methods, considering the complexity of this experience. Through detailed annotations that captured every scenario, including edge cases and logic, I ensured clarity, minimized confusion, and supported a seamless development process.
