Working at Hostelworld
(November 2018 to May 2020)
I earned a foothold at Hostelwrold through my internship there, which was in turn secured through a successful team presentation wherein my teammates and I from the New Digital School redesigning Hostelworld’s ‘Search experience’. On concluding my internship, the company hired me as their UX researcher. Since assuming the role and above and beyond its implications, I served as Hostelworld’s UX strategist and helped lay the groundwork for a thriving UX culture.
The work I did:
UX Strategy
UX research:
Heuristic Analysis - Competitor analysis - Severity grading prioritization - Usability testing - User interviews - Stakeholder interviews - Card sorting - Affinity mapping - User story mapping - A/B testing - Sitemapping - Surveys and polls
The challenges I faced
My role as the UX researcher was the first of its kind at Hostelworld, and likewise, my maiden job in the world of digital design after exiting law. Much of what I did at Hostelworld was learned and disseminated on the go. At the time of my becoming a part of the company, Hostelworld was itself in the wake of some freshly initiated structural changes and the wind had only started to blow towards evidence and research lead design. I faced the following challenges in its wake:
Bringing awareness regarding the indispensability of UX research in the Product Development Process (PDP).
Implementing changes in the product development cycle to accommodate extensive research and testing.
Dispensing information, as well as training fellow employees about different UX research methods and when and how to use them.
Bringing to the fore major red flags regarding certain systems in place, or their lack thereof; such as extensive AB testing and the lack of qualitative data gathering and testing methods.
Being the only UX researcher for the entire company, that too without any prior experience, did take a toll on me especially as regards shouldering different UX responsibilities for the varied UX needs of the company.
The changes I worked towards
Setting out research-oriented and evidence-led product roadmaps (which mandated the creation of site maps, conducting stakeholder interviews, identifying ‘red routes’ along the site map, conducting heuristic analysis, prioritizing issues using ‘severity grading’ system and cost-benefit analysis, affinity mapping, moderated usability testing) and stipulating some fundamental UX practices and guidelines.
Presented POCs for the implementation of UX tools in order to enable ready access to qualitative information (heat maps, visitor recordings, conversion funnels, form analysis) to all teams/domains in the company, to supplement quantitative with qualitative data. It was further meant to enable designers (or whomsoever interested) to conduct quick research through polls, surveys, etc, and further evidence-driven decisions. Hostelworld consequently subscribed to Hotjar.
Regularly participated in stakeholder meetings, bringing to the fore some crippling user pain points adversely impacting KPIs (discovered through usability tests, polls, information gathered from customer service, analytics, etc.) along with potential solutions. I presented reports on key pain points based on evidence gathered through Hotjar. Eg. User feedback vis-a-vis price and payments on Hostelworld and Issues re images on Hostelworld
Worked towards eradicating existing design debt and focusing on design that is geared towards simplicity rather than sophistication. For the purpose of identifying design debt ( including usability and accessibility issues), I’ve conducted multiple heuristic analyses (such as this Heuristic Analysis of Hostelworl’d checkout page), moderated usability tests, polls, surveys, qualitative AB tests (to name a few).
After conducting competitor analysis and combining it with the slew of user requests/pain points gathered through polls, I presented reports on identified opportunities to improve the experience on each page of the website’s funnel.
Aided in the development of a centralized dashboard showcasing key metrics to identify and track user satisfaction and behavior throughout the website funnel, readily available for anyone in the company to monitor.
Helped researching alternative tools for managing CRM and GMT, so as to take away from the burden born by the product designers to hardcode ‘employee and customer newsletters’, inter alia.
What else?
As mentioned earlier, I shouldered many a UX-related responsibility, while educating myself and others in the process as regards UX best practices. One such instance of disseminating academic knowledge, whilst learning it myself related to the way Hostelworld conducted AB tests versus how AB tests should be carried out. It was an ongoing issue at the company as to how AB tests were producing some very confusing results and were excessively being dependent on for justifying some questionable design decisions. As a result, after speaking with my manager, I proceeded to conduct extensive research as regards the dos and don’ts of AB testing and synthesized it to create an AB testing handbook.
In another example, I set up an information page detailing the different UX research methods; when to use them, and who at Hostelworld can help carry them out.