Case

Weekend+ Designing an End-to-End Travel Planning Experience

Challenge

Rakuten Travel aimed to expand beyond booking into a full travel planning experience, allowing users to plan, customize, and purchase trips in one place.

However, the current experience was fragmented:

• Planning, booking, and itinerary were disconnected

• Users relied on multiple tools to organize trips

• Limited support for end-to-end travel decision-making

The core challenge:
How might we unify planning and booking into a seamless, end-to-end experience?

My Role

I led the end-to-end UX process from discovery to delivery:

• Conducted research and opportunity analysis

• Facilitated cross-functional workshops (Product, Marketing, Engineering)

• Defined user journey, information architecture, and feature scope

• Designed and validated solutions through usability testing

• Delivered final design system and product documentation for launch

Key Insight

Travel planning is not a single action — it is a multi-stage journey.

Users:

• Explore ideas

• Compare options

• Plan itineraries

• Book services

The real problem:
Existing products only support booking, not planning

Strategy

1. Design for the full journey

Instead of focusing only on booking:

Created a unified flow:

• Inspiration → Planning → Booking → Trip management

2. Support itinerary thinking

Research showed many users use packages or structured plans

Solution:

• Introduced itinerary-based planning

• Help users organize trips in a structured way

3. Align multiple services into one experience

Rakuten offers:

• Flights

• Hotels

• Activities

The challenge:
Combine them into a coherent experience, not separate features

4. Drive alignment through workshops

The product required coordination across multiple teams.

Solution:

• Facilitated design sprints

• Defined roadmap, priorities, and feature scope collaboratively

Key Design Decisions

• Built an end-to-end travel flow instead of isolated booking features

• Structured information architecture around user journey stages

• Prioritized features based on user value and feasibility

• Created scalable design and documentation for cross-team implementation

Key Design Decisions

• Built an end-to-end travel flow instead of isolated booking features

• Structured information architecture around user journey stages

• Prioritized features based on user value and feasibility

• Created scalable design and documentation for cross-team implementation

What This Demonstrates

This project highlights my ability to:

• Design 0→1 products from concept to launch

• Structure complex, multi-stage user journeys

• Align multiple services into a cohesive experience

• Lead cross-functional collaboration and product definition

This is VERY important:

Designed a 0→1 travel planning platform that unifies inspiration, planning, and booking into a seamless end-to-end experience.

Action - Details