Case

0-to-1 Product Discovery and Cross-Functional Service Design

01. The Strategic Challenge

As the digital travel landscape in Japan became increasingly saturated, Rakuten Travel sought to move beyond transactional booking and expand into holistic lifecycle engagement. The objective was to create a brand-new ecosystem mobile application, Weekend+, designed to support users through the fragmented journey of itinerary creation, inspiration discovery, and cross-service reservations (flights, hotels, and car rentals).

The primary challenge was navigating extreme ambiguity at a 0-to-1 product stage. While Rakuten possessed immense market data, the exact feature ecosystem required to capture user loyalty post-booking remained undefined. Additionally, operating under strict budget constraints required a hyper-focused MVP scope that could prove immediate business value without bloating engineering timelines.

• My Role: Senior Product Designer & Product Owner Hybrid (Market Discovery, Service Blueprinting, Design Sprint Facilitation, Technical Product Documentation).

• The Goal: Define an intuitive itinerary creation experience, align multi-department business logic, and deliver a production-ready MVP blueprint.

02. The UX Strategy: Designing for the Planning Phase

Domestic user research revealed an invaluable behavioral insight: over 25% of Japanese travelers actively prefer pre-curated vacation packages, prioritizing highly structured, predictable timelines over spontaneous travel. To capture this segment, the product needed to shift from an open-ended utility to an inspiration-driven guide.

Key UX Interventions:

• Facilitating the Google Design Sprint: To accelerate alignment and define our MVP core, I structured and ran an intensive Google Design Sprint workshop bringing together engineering, marketing, and travel business analysts. Together, we mapped user behavior to translate complex data insights into actionable journey maps.

• Low-Fidelity Validation Iterations: Rather than jumping straight to polished UI, I constructed low-fidelity layout frameworks to run rapid internal usability testing loops across diverse screening segments within Rakuten. This targeted feedback loop exposed navigation roadblocks before any code was committed.

• Stepping Up to Product Ownership: Due to localized budget constraints, I expanded my senior scope to lead the end-to-end product documentation and technical specifications. I explicitly defined the feature scope, state-logic matrices, and engineering edge cases, ensuring zero ambiguity during handoff.

03. Product Lifecycle & Ecosystem Blueprint

I mapped out the entire service flow, connecting early discovery inspiration touchpoints directly with core booking utilities to keep users engaged past their initial transaction.

[Inspiration/Discovery] ──► [Itinerary Creation] ──► [Cross-Service Booking Engine] ──► [Post-Launch Scaling]

By packaging our validated prototypes alongside a robust component design library and thorough technical specs, the mobile application successfully launched to the Japanese consumer market, creating a sustainable foundation for long-term user retention.

04. Business & Operational Impact

The launch of Weekend+ provided Rakuten Travel with a distinct, engagement-first mobile product that bridged the gap between vacation inspiration and cross-service checkout metrics.

By taking structural ownership of the product documentation, technical specifications, and design assets simultaneously, I successfully optimized the delivery pipeline, slashing development alignment cycles and ensuring the cross-functional MVP launched perfectly on time and within budget boundaries. The unified itinerary creation patterns and accompanying design library effectively transformed how internal teams approach new mobile properties, serving as an active case study for agile, resource-efficient product execution across Rakuten's broader digital travel vertical.

Senior Takeaway: True seniority means operating beyond the traditional boundaries of Figma. When constraints demand it, a Lead Designer must possess the product acumen to step up as a Product Owner—translating loose user behavior trends into structured, technically feasible documentation that transforms cross-functional ambiguity into an executed, market-ready mobile platform.

Action - Details