Expanding IHG brand awareness through the map search experience
Kevin Arleo
UX Designer
UI Designer
A need for an enjoyable and useful map experience.
The former version of the map was an early first approach to expand the list results with an hybrid version of the search. But we were aware that this experience had many pain points and we had many opportunities to improve user experience and at the same time expand IHG brand awareness.
Problem statement
Identifying brands, a priority.
Following our standard process, we started defining the problem statement and hypothesis for the project.
Starting from the ground up. Or from the ocean.
The first step was to re-define the style of the map itself. We wanted to be aligned with users mental models so we started looking at global patterns. We wanted a map that was lighter/muted enough to serve as a background with multiple color labels on it, but at the same time, highlighting relevant data as:
Seas/lakes
Parks
Businesses or places of interest
It's all about balance
We designed different variations for hotel labels and weighed on the pros and cons of each version. We tried to cover all possible options, and then we chose the ones that worked better. Some of the versions included:
Color background - white icon - white text
White background - color icon - black text
White background - icon with color background - black text
Hotel clusters.
The experience
With a great design, comes a great experience.
With the new map design ready and with brand new labels for each hotel, now we had to develop whole map search experience:
Search update: We wanted users to have the ability to update the map search in the location they were seeing at the moment.
Center to location: The ability to center the map to their current location.
Error states: We needed an error state if there were no hotels in the selected area.
Hotel clusters: The case scenario of many hotels in the same area.
Expanding brand recognition.
Before the map re-design, users barely used the map view and preferred to use the list view. After the re-designed experience, users started to communicate in user testing sessions that they enjoyed using an hybrid version of the search, with the possibility of comparing hotels distances from specific points.This was also a starting point for expanding brand awareness throughout all IHG channels, using the same brand labels as a design system, users will be able to easily identifying an IHG hotel brand on the desktop website, mobile website, or the native app.
