Faster Tour Search: Designing for Learnability

By simplifying the system, we didn’t just improve speed—we made it easier to learn.

In 3 months, we:

1. Defined success across teams—speed and trainability
   Prior work had optimized for features, not learnability. We aligned on both.

2. Reframed search as a decision-making system
   Designed a unified workflow that brought key booking criteria into one place.

3. Proved value before committing to build
   Validated with agents that the new flow improved speed and confidence (Rated 9/10).

My Role:

• Co-led a rapid prototyping initiative to define and validate a unified tour search workflow

• Aligned stakeholders on goals, constraints, and success metrics

• Translated insights into a prioritized roadmap focused on reducing training and call time

The Challenge

The business needed to get it from four weeks to two.

Agents at Norwegian Cruise Lines needed to evaluate tours across pricing, availability, and constraints—but:

• Critical data was hidden or difficult to access

• Manual cross-referencing was required for decision making

• Key functionality, search and comparison, lived in separate tools

The result: missed opportunities, lower conversion, and longer training times to navigate the system.

Defining the Problem

Starting with shared goals

A previous project struggled because:

• Teams were optimizing for different outcomes across product, engineering, and business

• Misalignment was causing rework + power struggles downstream

I facilitated a workshop to collectively define what success looked like, where stakeholders voted on top goals before jumping into solutions.

• Reducing training time by 50%

• Reducing call time by 30%

• Reducing travel partner call center reliance

Roadmapping: Building the System in Learnable Stages

To avoid repeating past misalignment, I co-created a clear, shared roadmap with stakeholders.

We prioritized features based on collective business goals and agent workflows:

This sequencing optimized learnability, reducing training complexity while we built toward a unified system.

UX Research

Research Findings: Too Little, Too Late

Talking with agents revealed pain points:

1. Outdated, incomplete tour info → low customer confidence and missed bookings

2. Rigid, linear workflows → poor support for real-time customer conversations

3. Information spread across 5 sources → manually piecing together answers across agent tools, website + printouts

Wireframing & Prototyping

Designing for familiarity

Agents often relied on the consumer website to search because it was more intuitive than internal tools.

The new design leveraged existing patterns from the website to reduce the need to relearn how to search.

The After: Search + Results in One Place

The search bar is now layered on top of the legacy interface as an overlay.

This enabled:

• Search + comparison in one place

• Continuity & integration with existing workflows

The Before: Search + Results Separated

Agents had to search, then switch contexts to compare and evaluate tours.

Now, they’re in a single interface—enabling agents to search, compare, and decide without breaking flow.

Outcome

We tested the new workflow with agents to confirm it improved how they actually worked.

Agents were able to find, compare, and evaluate tours within a single flow, without switching between tools or relying on memory.

The new experience was consistently rated as more intuitive and easier to learn. Average ratings:

• 9/10 for value

• 9.9/10 for ease of use

The result:

• Reduced decision time by 30%

• Simplified onboarding: fragmented workflows were consolitated into a single system.

Key Learnings

• Aligning on shared goals early prevents rework down the line, keeping teams focused on outcomes

• Validating value before build reduces risk and ensures solutions actually improve real workflows

• Designing for learnability is critical in training-heavy environments