WESTIN HOTELS REDESIGN
BACKGROUND
Westin had recently been redesigned to utilize a templated format and design system across all Starwood Brands. The Westin's brand philosophy, "Be Well," was the dominant message, and the site was structured so that each of the 6 wellness "pillars" had a dedicated category page. The site was clean and visually on-brand. Using standardized, yet customizable, templates decreased the project timeframe from design through development.
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THE PROBLEM
While the Westin Wellness message was prominently communicated, the amount of content could not support the new site structure. What seemed like an orderly structure ended up forcing the user to click through too many flat, thin pages. With such limited content spread across pages, the site felt weak and similar to a brochure. The brand promise promoting holistic well-being was being diluted within a fragmented digital experience.
BEFORE: Site structure with 6 "Wellness" subcategories within the About section. "Sleep Well" category shown here
MY PROCESS
With limited resources and an extremely fast project timeline, I focused on secondary research and collaborative working sessions with brand and product managers to identify content priorities and gaps. Because the product managers had expert knowledge about the goals and motivations of the hotel owners and guests, this method proved to be very effective. This process enabled us to move quickly and efficiently.
REQUIREMENTS INTERVIEWS: Notes from brand immersion and content requirements meetings to understand the Westin brand's narrative and priority messages
CONTENT STRATEGY
Analyzing brand and content requirements into a strategy, I proposed three site structure options that each told a slightly different brand narrative. My site maps with page-level content details enabled productive working sessions to align on where we wanted to apply emphasis. We could discuss, mark-up, and ultimately agree on a direction.
SITE MAP OPTIONS: Content strategy options represented in different site map variations
DESIGN COLLABORATION
Once there was alignment on the content strategy direction, I worked with the product designer to tell the story within our modular design system. We collaborated on how to represent content and flesh out in the UI.
CONTENT AND DESIGN SKETCH SESSION: Whiteboard session with designer
SITE DESIGN
The result was a structure much more aligned with the brand program strategy and message. Ultimately, we collapsed the hierarchy and removed any gratuitous content to create richer experiences. Only larger program initiatives were highlighted with sub-pages. Streamlining the content made the site feel more robust and more immersive to the user.
AFTER : Final design of integrated site
END NOTES
Along with showing page-level content modules in the site maps, I also included illustrations of possible modules from our design system that could best represent the content. Showing these visual representations of content and UI helped the team get early consensus and minimize swirl that we could not afford due to an aggressive schedule. It became a successful format that we adopted for the remaining 8 brands being redesigned, helping us to stay on schedule.
SITE MAP - PAGE CONTENT AND DESIGN SYSTEM: Example of a page in the site map showing content breakdown within modular design system