Key Contributions:

• Autonomous Design Leadership: Defined and implemented a comprehensive design system, established success metrics, and conducted thorough user-centered research, operating with a high degree of autonomy within an agile, start-up-like team.
• User-Centric Solutions: Developed and refined processes to simplify the VAT refund experience, enhancing usability for non-EU tourists and creating a new revenue stream for Travelex.
• Pilot Program Development: Designed and executed a pilot program in collaboration with retailer Oliver Bonas, which included developing a dedicated web app with features like VAT e-receipts, online registration, and fast track airport passes.
• App Development: Created the goTaxFree App to digitize the VAT refund process, incorporating features such as digitized VAT receipts, a streamlined claim process, and user-friendly interfaces.
• API and Partnership Expansion: Colaborated with tech to develop robust APIs and formed strategic partnerships, particularly with China Union Pay, to extend VAT refund services to a wider tourist base, ensuring seamless integration and enhanced user experience.
• Research: Conducted user preference tests, ethnographic research, and observational studies to gather qualitative and quantitative data. These research methods informed design decisions and led to improved product iterations based on user feedback

Challenges & Achievements:

• Stakeholder Buy-in: Successfully advocated for UX principles and design investments to stakeholders, demonstrating the value through improved user engagement and streamlined processes.
• Complexity Reduction: Addressed the complexity of the traditional VAT refund system by implementing user-friendly digital solutions, significantly reducing the time and effort required for tourists to claim refunds.
• Pilot Program Success: The Oliver Bonas pilot program provided valuable insights, allowing us to refine our proposition and confirm the viability of our approach before broader implementation.
• User Feedback Integration: Utilized real user feedback and data-driven insights to continually improve the VAT refund experience, ensuring the solutions met user needs effectively.
• Focus on Benefits: Shifted the product focus from process-centric to benefit-centric based on user feedback, emphasizing the time-saving advantages of the fast track offer, which enhanced user satisfaction and engagement.

The solutions

To address the complexities of the VAT refund process, we implemented three key solutions, which we progressively developed, building upon the learnings from each prior application.

By developing these solutions sequentially, we would be able to improved the VAT refund experience based on real user feedback and data-driven insights

Design Experiments

Understanding Users and Solving Problems

During my tenure at Travelex, we prioritized user-centric approaches to product development, leading us to conduct a series of design experiments. Here are some examples I presented to the team to illustrate the importance of these experiments and the outcomes we achieved:

Preference Test for Receipt Dashboard

Preference tests are valuable tools for selecting between design variations by directly asking users for their preferences. In these tests, participants are presented with multiple design options and are asked to choose their favorite.

We conducted a preference test on our receipts dashboard to gauge user opinions on our current design and to identify any potential issues for improvement

Quantitative Analysis

Qualitative Feedback: To delve deeper into participant preferences, we posed four key questions:

1. Why did you select this version?
2. Is there anything you disliked about this version?
3. What do you prefer in the other versions?
4. Do you think anything is missing?

Key Learnings:

1. Preference for Traditional Traffic Light System: Users favored a more conventional traffic light system over icon colors. This finding suggests a preference for familiar and easily interpretable visual cues.
2. Benefit of Dark Header: Incorporating a dark header helped users focus on the correct area within the dashboard, enhancing usability and clarity.
3. Qualitative Feedback Insights: The qualitative feedback provided valuable insights for the product team, highlighting areas for improvement in the existing design (version 4) that were previously unidentified.

By combining quantitative analysis with qualitative feedback, we gained a comprehensive understanding of user preferences and identified actionable insights to guide future design iterations

Role Playing – Incentives 

Hypothesis:

If users are giving a physical voucher to join the fast track queue at the airport they will be more likely to self identify to queue hosts as GTF customers, and be more likely to convert from registered to completed tourists

Test:

Perform role play of shopping an airport experience giving half of users a vouchers and half not, to see if it changes their behaviour. 

Quantitative Analysis

Key learnings:

1. 1. People forget very quickly
   2. People don’t read
   3. Financial reward confusing and irrelevant to most users – they care about time
   4. We need to focus on benefits to users

A shift of focus from process to benefits

Our role play experiment showed to us that we need to focus on our one clear differentiator, which at this time is the fast track offer we are able to provide.

We decided that we would that we would use this research to direct how we approach our website offering, which was used for our retailer pilot. We moved away from showing the process of claiming a refund and FAQ’s to a simpler landing page which focused on our USP and how that will benefit our customers.