TripAdvisor. Travel Guides
TripAdvisor's travel guides came together after the early 2014 acquisition of TripBod, a startup that connected travelers with local experts. Featuring tips and recommendations for restaurants, hotels, and attractions in the world's most popular cities, travel guides are written by reputable locals. These guides, available in 200+ cities around the world, are among the best content available on TripAdvisor.
Referencing a curated guide was a totally new way for TripAdvisor users to discover new destinations and find things to do on the go. It was also a brand new platform for users to share information about his/her home city. Our team designed an experience with these travelers in mind.
TripAdvisor Neighborhoods
In 2015, TripAdvisor continued to expand the depth of information available for its most popular global cities. Our design team worked closely with product and engineering stakeholders to build TripAdvisor Neighborhoods, which redefined the way our users could plan for a trip.
The new database allowed travelers to search for "hotels in Montmartre" or "Fisherman's Wharf restaurants" and view specified results within each neighborhood. Or they could explore pages detailing places of interest in a specific map area, which was especially useful for planning meals and activities near a hotel.
TripAdvisor Style Guide
When we first proposed TripAdvisor's Style Guide Initiative, we were met with a lot of skepticism—no one had ever succeeded in pushing forward a project like that at TripAdvisor. Rather than backing down, we formed a powerhouse team of designers, engineers, product managers, and higher management. We shared the common goal of giving everyone the ability to ship code faster with a set of standardized assets.
Starting with an audit of the thousands of visual and interactive elements across the website, we slowly reeled in everything from button gradients to font sizes to all the variations of green we could find. We discussed solutions that would work best for each of our platforms (desktop, mobile, tablet), tested our recommendations with users, and submitted the results to management.
Today the TripAdvisor Style Guide lives on an internal dev server and includes buttons, modals, tool tips, and tags. The team continues to build on it with the ultimate goal of publishing a live guide.