Improving villa discovery at
The Thinking Traveller

Project overview

Context

The Thinking Traveller is a luxury villa rental company specialising in hand-picked properties across the Mediterranean. Over several years I led a series of UX improvements to the search results experience — a critical stage in the booking journey. These iterative optimisations combined research, experimentation and design system evolution to improve discovery, engagement and lead generation. Research showed users were 40% more likely to book or enquire when the search results page was part of their journey, making it a key opportunity for optimisation.

Objective

Improve the villa discovery experience to increase engagement and conversion. This included introducing new discovery features, improving filtering and navigation, and aligning the interface with the brand’s luxury positioning.

My role

Lead Designer responsible for the end-to-end improvement of the search results experience. I led research, UX strategy, wireframing and prototyping, and collaborated with engineering and marketing teams to validate and ship improvements through A/B testing.

Key product insights

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• Users browsing multiple villas often forgot previously viewed properties.
• Filters were underused due to poor visibility and discoverability.
• Users needed encouragement to shortlist villas before enquiry.
• Preview imagery improved engagement before committing to property pages.

Design approach

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Research and analysis

• Conducted competitor analysis and stakeholder interviews.
• Analysed behavioural data to identify drop-off points in the search journey.
• Developed hypotheses to guide UX improvements.

Design and feature development

• Created wireframes and prototypes for new discovery features.
• Introduced modules including Recently Viewed, Guidance Cards, and Mini Slideshows.
• Designed vertical filtering to improve usability and exploration.
• Integrated components into a scalable design system.

Rebranding

• Introduced a refined visual language aligned with luxury travel.
• Delivered a scalable design system used across the platform.

User testing and validation

• Ran A/B testing and analysed live usage metrics.
• Iterated based on engagement and conversion outcomes.

Product optimisation process

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• Improvements to the search experience were delivered through an iterative product cycle combining research, experimentation and data analysis.

Features introduced

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• Recently Viewed — personalised recall of previously viewed villas
• Mini slideshow — preview multiple villa images directly within results cards
• Left-hand filtering — improved discoverability and exploration
• Filter tags — visible active filters for transparency
• Guidance card — prompts encouraging shortlist creation.