case study
case study
case study
frameworks | expedia group
OVERVIEW
OVERVIEW
OVERVIEW
Background
Expedia Group (EG) oversaw a broad range of travel brands that historically functioned in silos, each with distinct systems, strategies, and customer experiences. To create a more unified and customer-centric approach, EG launched a major organizational restructure designed to consolidate its offerings into a single, seamless travel platform. This initiative—known as the Universal Messaging Platform (UMP)—was developed to preserve the individuality of each brand while fostering cross-brand engagement, education, and loyalty.
Due to expansive details, the follow areas are further expanded on desktop or tablet views.
• Project Overview
• contributions
• role overview
• key insights
challenges
While mobile apps were part of the customer journey, a significant portion of users engaged exclusively through email—making it a vital communication channel for transactional and marketing content. Despite its importance, EG's email ecosystem was fragmented, inconsistent, and operationally inefficient.
At the outset of UMP, users received inconsistent experiences—even for identical actions—which had five distinct versions live simultaneously across brands. Variations in design, content, and formatting created confusion and eroded trust in the broader brand family.
Internally, each brand operated on separate deployment platforms, making performance tracking, optimization, and scalability nearly impossible. With thousands of inconsistent templates, disconnected data pipelines, and siloed workflows, the existing system couldn’t support the company's evolving needs. This wasn’t simply a migration—it required a complete strategic and technical rebuild.
Compounding factors:
A concurrent, company-wide reorganization and rebrand.
Limited platform capabilities and technical constraints.
Internal knowledge gaps due to shifting roles and team structures.
Opportunities
This misalignment revealed an urgent need to standardize and streamline EG’s email communications. By unifying design, messaging, and infrastructure across all brands, there was a clear opportunity to improve usability, drive engagement, reduce operational complexity, and reinforce a cohesive brand experience. The effort evolved from a basic lift-and-shift to building a scalable, future-ready system. Instead of only replicating existing assets, we redesigned the communication experience from the ground up—prioritizing consistency, flexibility, and long-term growth.
audience
Backend Users: Internal Expedia Group (EG) teams including UX and brand designers, product managers, engineers, production specialists, data analysts, and marketing teams.
Frontend Users: EG travelers who receive and engage with emails across various lines of business—benefiting from the consistency and clarity of a centralized communication experience.
constraints
Aggressive 6-month timeline.
Transition from legacy templates to net-new communications.
Simultaneous rebranding and platform migration.
Complex organizational shifts impacting resources and clarity
analysis & review
Through a comprehensive audit of Expedia Group’s email communications, my team examined the full user experience to identify opportunities for optimization and consistency. By researching contextual needs and analyzing live examples across various travel categories, we mapped user flows and recurring content types. This work led to the development of a structured library of modular components and standardized design patterns, forming the foundation for a unified, scalable email system.
Same email, different variations
Consistency between types of modules
strategy & goals
Expedia Group's portfolio of brands were each acting like standalone businesses than parts of a unified ecosystem. To address this, EG launched a company-wide restructuring to reposition itself as an all-in-one travel platform. This transformation aimed to showcase the unique value of each brand while encouraging cross-brand discovery, increasing user engagement, loyalty, and brand versatility.
For Expedia Group, these emails delivered key, data-driven information such as bookings, payments, itineraries, marketing messages, and personalized prompts making it a key channel of user communication. However, the email system was inconsistent and disjointed, resulting in inefficiencies and a declining user experience.
For example, at one point, five different versions of the same Activity Purchase Confirmation email were in use across brands. While serving the same purpose, each had its own distinct design, leading to user confusion and an overall lack of cohesion in the brand experience.
Design Discrepancies | Cruise vs Flight & Hotels
frameworks & systems
Under my leadership, the team developed the Email Module Library (EML)—a scalable framework that introduced component-based email design to Expedia Group for the first time. The system allowed individual modules to stack seamlessly, enabling flexible, consistent layouts across all communications. We leveraged development tokens and a theming engine to support automatic brand and design updates, making it possible to apply the distinct look and feel of all 26 brands. The library grew to include over 150 modules to accommodate the wide range of email types deployed across the organization.
These modules were meticulously maintained and expanded over the course of three years to meet evolving business and customer needs. Modules were created to hide components if the they were irrelevant for a specific communication, to allow more flexibility to the individual modules. Shown here are modules in their default state, before brand theming is applied.
Snippets of the UMP Frameworks
module stacking
To meet the needs of individual marketing briefs, designers would select and stack relevant modules to create tailored templates. These templates were documented for evergreen use, while still allowing flexibility for ad-hoc designs and rapid template creation. Each module was carefully maintained to ensure seamless stacking, with no misalignment or inconsistency across the final layout.
Modules to Templates
THEMER APPLICATIONS
Working closely with engineering, my team and I implemented dev-powered tokens that enabled seamless brand theming across modules. When Themer was applied, components automatically adapted to the specific brand guidelines of each company (e.g., Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo). This required a thorough UAT process within the creative team to ensure every Figma design file matched development expectations and that the final dev modules were pixel-perfect.
Themer Transitions
unique copy and imagery
After briefs were assessed and translated for deployment, designers would apply unique content to each communication, tailoring it to the intended audience. This included personalized elements such as customer names, loyalty tiers, rewards, and other individual data points. In addition to static personalization, many communications leveraged complex dynamic modules powered by data—incorporating geo-fencing, lines of business (LOBs), playback history, and other behavioral triggers to deliver highly relevant, real-time content at scale.
Instead of relying on manual updates, we implemented a token-based system that allowed brand changes to cascade automatically across both design and development. This created a future-proof framework that ensured consistency, efficiency, and scalability as brand guidelines evolved.
In parallel, we collaborated closely with photographers to source fresh, modern imagery that aligned with the updated brand aesthetic. Accessibility was a core priority—ADA and EAA standards were deeply integrated throughout the design system, ensuring that every visual and interactive element met compliance requirements and could scale with future accessibility updates.
Deployed Comms
CONTRIBUTIONS
CONTRIBUTIONS
project OVERVIEW
As the creative digital product director for Expedia Group Email, I oversaw the full lifecycle of email communications, blending UX, strategy, technology, and marketing to create scalable, user-centered systems that drive engagement and business growth. I built roadmaps for modular systems and automation, collaborating across design, engineering, data, and marketing to ensure personalized, accessible, and high-performing email experiences.
I spearheaded the strategy and execution of a scalable, modular email ecosystem for all brands, bridging design, engineering, data, and brand to deliver consistent, personalized communications at scale. Leading a team of 14 graphic and UX designers, I partnered with over 100 cross-functional stakeholders across all levels of the organization to ensure seamless integration and dynamic messaging across global markets.
brand & visual consistency
Maintained brand integrity across all communications by implementing each brand’s established look, tone of voice, and visual identity into newly established digital mediums.
Applied consistent design language and assets across print, digital, and app touchpoints to support a unified customer experience.
design
Created and executed design concepts, contributing to strategic brainstorming sessions across cross-functional teams
Redlined team designs, capabilities, and content to support seamless product deployment
Ensured consistent alignment with brand guidelines and copy standards across all deliverables
Maintained and enforced design standards within the Email Master Library (EML) to ensure quality and consistency
Created and maintained new EML modules, enabling scalable design solutions
Utilized Figma design patterns and tokens to build and maintain a cohesive, system-driven design framework
design systems & technical foundations
Created and implemented design tokens in Figma, linking them directly to dev-ready components.
Built and maintained a modular Email Design System and dynamic component library used across 26 brands, 6 languages, and 12 PoS.
Ensured designs met accessibility (ADA/EAA/WCAG), dark mode, and responsive requirements.
Provided technical guidance to brand, copy, and studio teams on how to build and hand off dev-ready files using scripted tokens and best practices.
Designed net-new, dynamic modules that could be stacked and reused to form personalized templates.
product & program management
Led product management for Expedia Group's email channel, implementing strategy, development, execution, and performance of CRM communications to create scalable, evolving systems that meet both user and business needs.
Developed user-centered strategy by defining goals, audience segments, and user journeys for personalized email experiences.
Managed roadmapping and prioritization, incorporating development pipelines, automation flows, and email-specific features for efficient execution.
Collaborated with cross-functional teams (design, engineering, data, marketing) to optimize email content, systems, and ensure compliance with brand and business goals.
Oversaw technical infrastructure, including modular design, token integration, ESP (Email Service Provider) management, and quality assurance (accessibility and rendering testing).
project management & process enablement
Defined clear processes and documentation, including roles and responsibilities, to guide teams from planning to deployment.
Onboarded project managers into an end-to-end workflow, from intake and briefing to asset delivery, UAT, and performance analysis.
Led teams through complex communications, including the most dynamic and technically challenging builds in EG’s portfolio.
marketing & strategy alignment
Translated marketing strategies and lifecycle campaigns (e.g., Inspiration, Shopping, Churn, Loyalty, GTM, Transactional ) into tailored email briefs.
Worked across 10+ lines of business—Flights, Hotels, Cars, etc.—to ensure creative execution aligned with business goals.
Supported campaign planning by reviewing briefs for feasibility, clarity, and completeness.
data & personalization
Designed comms that integrated dynamic data (e.g., loyalty points, bookings) and accounted for fallback states and data gaps.
Implemented A/B testing and creative optimizations informed by performance findings.
Built capabilities to scale personalization across global modules, ensuring one send could produce individualized output per user.
campaign execution
Applied the module system to live briefs—curating modules, inserting branded content, and prepping for dev handoff.
Launched new products including One Key, One Key Credit Card, and Expedia Edge, as well as evergreen campaigns spanning inspirational, shopping, trip, churn, risk, transactional, and multi-touchpoint initiatives.
deployment & development production
Collaborated with production teams to ensure accurate deployment of designs, meeting system specifications and technical requirements.
Oversaw quality assurance processes, troubleshooting issues related to rendering, accessibility, and performance.
Ensured seamless integration and timely delivery of email campaigns.
Aligned final products with creative, technical, and business goals, optimizing performance across multiple devices and platforms.
legal, platform, & governance
Collaborated with Legal to embed compliance logic across brands, PoS, loyalty, and credit cards.
Consulted on the UMP platform’s technical requirements, including its integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Developed governance content and created Confluence documentation to support team adoption and ensure platform-wide consistency.
KEY IMPACTS
KEY IMPACTS
Results
Established EG’s first unified email communication design system, eliminating inconsistencies across all brands and enabling scalable, brand-consistent messaging.
Drove a monthly engagement lift of ~275K users within the first year, supporting growth across a base of 168M+ members.
Reduced design-to-development time by 45% through reusable, standardized components and streamlined creative workflows.
Achieved adoption across EG’s global brand portfolio, ensuring consistent user experiences regardless of region or point of sale.
Cut production time by 50% by improving cross-functional collaboration between design and engineering teams.