Designing for Every User: Creating Tailored Onboarding and Smart Tips for Expedia DMC

CLIENT

ROLE

Strategy & Design Lead

DURATION

11 weeks

The Expedia DMC (Data Management Central) project was an opportunity to turn a complex internal tool into something intuitive, approachable, and genuinely useful. I led the project from end to end—research, strategy, and design—guiding the team through a full UX transformation. We introduced a personalized onboarding flow with clear Smart Tips, helping both new and experienced users navigate the platform with confidence. By addressing core usability issues and aligning the experience with user needs, we reimagined DMC as a tool that people actually want to use.

OVERVIEW

We started with nine stakeholder interviews to understand business goals and long-term vision. From there, we audited the current platform and an early DMC 2.0 redesign. To round out our discovery, we selected ten users across multiple geographies and roles to provide a wide range of perspectives.

I created a structured interview guide to keep sessions focused while staying flexible enough to follow interesting threads. Each interview was synthesized into key themes that shaped the direction of our UX strategy.

Research & Discovery recap slide

We asked users to rank areas of focus

Our interviews uncovered four key challenges: users weren’t clear on what DMC was, often bypassed it in favor of tools like Slack and Confluence, lacked trust in the data, and didn’t see enough value to justify regular use.

To shift this perception, we focused our strategy on first impressions—mapping an onboarding journey that began before login and continued with contextual Smart Tips inside the tool. These touchpoints guided users through key actions while reinforcing DMC’s purpose, helping build trust and relevance over time.

The UI was clean, flexible, and grounded in Expedia’s design system for efficient implementation. We designed modular onboarding screens with clear, relevant messaging based on user type that appeared before users entered the platform.

Once inside the platform, contextual Smart Tips were available to guide users through key tasks and features. Offered in both video and multi-step formats, these tips could be turned off entirely by experienced users.

While outside the scope of the initial redesign, we explored several ideas with the client that generated strong interest: an AI-powered data assistant, a wiki-style knowledge base, advanced data validation tools, gamification to encourage engagement, in-app notifications, and dedicated training modules. Each of these has strong potential to further evolve DMC into a go-to data resource for Expedia teams.