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Amex GBT Egencia, a global corporate travel management platform, provides tools for booking, reporting, and support. Travel managers rely on its reporting tool for deeper insights, but user feedback revealed challenges with usability. This project focuses on redesigning the tool to be more intuitive and informative, empowering travel managers to make well-informed decisions for their travel programs.
July ‘24 to December '24
Competitive Analysis
Journey Mapping
Low & High Fidelity Wireframes
Usability Testing
UX Research
Figma
Qualtrics
Maze
Sisense
UX Designer
The Challenge ✨
Analytics Studio is a platform designed to provide travel managers with interactive dashboards and actionable insights to monitor and optimize corporate travel programs. While it offers valuable features, such as tools to analyze travel spend, policy compliance, and supplier performance, the platform faces significant usability, discoverability, and data credibility challenges. Despite its potential, many users struggle to utilize its full capabilities, resulting in low adoption and an overall suboptimal user experience. My goal was to uncover these pain points and redesign the experience to make it more intuitive, engaging, and effective for users.
Research 🔍
Who's our competition?
As part of my research, I analyzed our competitors, focusing primarily on Navan and TravelPerk to understand how they approach travel management dashboards. Additionally, I drew inspiration from Tableau and IBM Cognos Analytics for best practices in data visualization and dashboard organization. Here are the key insights I uncovered:
Competitors offer dynamic, highly customizable, and interactive dashboards that make data exploration seamless and visually engaging.
Egencia’s visualizations are more static and limited, making it harder for users to uncover actionable insights efficiently.
Advance Visualization and Interactivity
Self-Service and Usability
Platforms like Tableau and IBM Cognos enable users to create custom reports and dashboards with drag-and-drop interfaces, while Navan and TravelPerk simplify navigation for non-technical users.
Egencia, on the other hand, provides fewer self-service tools, often requiring technical support or predefined reporting workflows.
Competitors prioritize real-time data updates, predictive insights, and integrations across multiple data sources, scaling to meet broader organizational needs.
Egencia lacks these capabilities, limiting its ability to provide immediate, holistic insights beyond its travel ecosystem.
Real-Time Data and Scalability
What are our users saying?
Alongside a competitive analysis, I conducted five in-depth 1:1 user interviews (including one 1:2 session) to gather qualitative insights from our current users. These participants are frequent users of our reporting tools, providing valuable perspectives on their workflows, pain points, and needs. Below is a persona representing a typical user of Analytics Studio:
Define 💡
What does this all mean?
User Journey Map
After completing the initial research, my mentor and I organized our notes in Figjam to identify common themes. Here are the top three themes we discovered, along with the corresponding user problem statements:
To gain a deeper understanding of the user's experience, I mapped out a typical user journey, highlighting key pain points and identifying opportunities for improvement.
Usability
The tool is not easy to use. Filters are confusing and the overall experience is not intuitive.
"This is so confusing… (filters) deselected but shows up as red?"
User Problem Statements
Help me to feel like I don’t have to be an expert to use the tool
Help me to engage with a modern tool
Help me to confidently apply filters to my data
Discoverability
Difficult to find the information needed to craft a story for stakeholders.
“The data is there. It’s not the data. It’s the discoverability.”
User Problem Statements
Help me to find the data that’s most relevant to me
Help me to understand the overall story of my travel program
Help me tell the story to my stakeholders
Credibility
Not sure where the data is coming from, and how to get there.
“Why does this include that? How do you calculate this?” (in regards to data)
User Problem Statements
Help me to easily dig into the details of the data when I need to
Help me understand the data that’s presented to me
How might we redesign Analytics Studio to be more intuitive and trustworthy?
So we ask…
Design 🎨
Let's bring this to life (Lo-Med fi edition)
Following the research phase, I engaged in brainstorming sessions to explore initial design concepts. This step allowed me to better understand potential design directions and identify key opportunities for the solution.
Building on the lo-fi designs, I used the design system and developed mid-fidelity prototypes and gathered feedback from the team to refine the concepts further.
Explored ways to display key metrics…
How can we effectively highlight critical information? To address this, I explored the use of color and icon indicators to enhance visual hierarchy and reinforce key messages.
… and filters.
A key piece of feedback highlighted the confusion surrounding the existing filter experience. I explored redesigning it as either a side sheet modal or a dropdown menu. We ultimately chose the dropdown to align with the site's existing filter flow and ensure a consistent user experience.
Mobile Designs?
I explored the possibility of a mobile version for Analytics Studio. However, after interviewing users, it became clear that they had no interest in using a mobile solution. Based on this feedback, I decided to pause further development on the mobile design.
Final Three!!! (Hi-fi edition)
Here are the final three high-fidelity designs I came up with after getting feedback from my peers:
This design closely mirrors the current experience with a few key enhancements:
An "At Glance" section featuring sparklines for quick data insights.
A dropdown navigation next to the filters for improved accessibility.
"Quick filters" that allow users to easily see which filters are applied.
Two navigable tabs for better content organization.
A dynamic layout that adjusts based on user needs.
Clearer explanations on how the graphs generate their data for greater transparency.
Design #1
This design draws inspiration from common patterns found in data dashboard layouts:
Filters are positioned above the "At Glance" section to clearly indicate that they apply to the entire area.
"Quick filters" let users quickly see which filters are active.
Two navigable tabs for improved content organization and ease of use.
A collapsible left-side panel for efficient navigation.
Static graph layouts that users can customize to suit their needs.
Clearer explanations of how the graphs derive their data, enhancing transparency.
Design #2
This design is inspired by "homepage" layouts, offering a more personalized and engaging introduction:
Collapsible highlights at the top for streamlined navigation.
Multiple customizable tabs under "Your Dashboard" for a tailored experience.
Quick filters" that allow users to easily view and manage active filters.
The ability for users to pin or rearrange data visualizations for better flexibility.
Expandable sections that provide in-depth details on how data is sourced.
A Top Traveler summary displayed as a table view at the bottom of the page for easy reference.
Design #3
Which one do we go with?
Key Themes 🔑
Some feedback from our account managers…
Here are the results (drumroll please…)
To validate our designs, we conducted a preference test on Qualtrics.
After refining the design based on user feedback, I conducted five 1:1 interviews with account managers to gather their insights, as they work closely with our clients and have valuable perspectives.
Design #2 was voted most likely to be used!
Users liked how clean the UI looked
Filters are more prominent on the screen
Really liked the top KPIs
Design #3
Voted the most innovative
Design #1
Users favored the side navigation more in design #2
🥉
🥇
🥈
Navigation & Layout
Would like to see more prominent, intuitive filters.
Need for a home base for pre-built reports.
Design and Aesthetics:
Clean layouts are appreciated, but gray tones feel dull; more vibrant colors suggested.
Yellow interpreted as caution; spacing and clutter in widgets need improvement.
Trust and Usability
Trust increases with accessible raw data and simplified key metrics.
Executive users want a one-page summary for C-level reporting.
Personalization
Recommended dashboards should address distinct persona needs (e.g., finance, analysts).
Highlight critical data points upfront for easier decision-making.
Overall, I confirmed that the designs were moving in the right direction, progressing toward a more modernized experience.
Next Steps 👣
Given more time, here are key action items I would pursue:
Finalize modernized designs by incorporating positive elements from the preference test and account manager feedback.
Conduct a team workshop focused on: "How might we differentiate the travel summary dashboard?"
Perform additional rounds of user testing and feedback collection.
Develop a fully interactive end-to-end prototype.
Enhance Analytics Studio to be more intuitive and trustworthy.
People are here to support you, and collaboration is key to success. If reaching out can help move the project forward, whether by gaining insights, solving a challenge, or simply getting a fresh perspective, it’s always worth taking that step. Building connections and seeking guidance not only strengthens the project but also fosters a stronger, more collaborative team environment.
Don't be afraid to reach out 🙋
I learned the importance of knowing your audience when presenting design work. How you communicate with stakeholders, designers, engineers, or users should be tailored to their needs and priorities. Crafting the right narrative and highlighting what matters most to each group makes a huge difference—and thankfully, I had plenty of opportunities to practice this skill!
How to communicate design 💬
Internship Reflections 🪞
Embrace exploration 🛝
I used to feel like I had to present the most "perfect" version of my work to my peers, often rushing straight from lo-fi to hi-fi, thinking, "This will be impressive!" To my surprise, my mentor encouraged me to spend more time exploring lo-fi concepts. I learned that the early design stages are like a creative playground—an opportunity to experiment and generate a wide range of ideas, which ultimately fuels better, more innovative solutions.
That wraps up my internship!
Special thanks to my mentor and manager who provided me unwavering support throughout my time at AMEX GBT Egencia 😊