National Geographic Lindblad Expeditions

Optimizing Expedition Discovery:

Enabling Confident Booking Decisions

The Challenge

Finding the right expedition was one of the biggest friction points in the booking journey. The project started as a way to help users find their ideal trip and departure more easily. After a careful audit of the flow, I identified three main areas for improvement: the search feature in the top nav, the overall use of filters, and the departure cards. This case study focuses on the third.

Our existing departure cards acted primarily as links into checkout, showing only basic trip information like dates, price, ship, and itinerary.

Users frequently had to leave the expedition page—or contact an Expedition Specialist—to answer critical questions before deciding whether to book.

The business wanted to improve expedition discovery and increase users' confidence before entering the booking flow.

My Role

  • Product Designer

Project Length

  • 3 Months

Skills

  • Product Design
  • Product Strategy
  • Design System
  • Prototyping
  • Documentation

Business Goal

Enhance departure search and trip discovery across the website while helping guests make informed booking decisions earlier in their journey.

Understanding the Journey

At each stage of the journey, users are asking different questions and looking for different kind of information:

  • Homepage → Inspiration & Guidance: The user is exploring possibilities, looking for inspiration, and seeking guidance on where to go and what might be right for them.
  • Destination Page → Narrowing Options: The user has chosen a destination, but still needs help understanding the different options and narrowing down what best fits their needs.
  • Expedition Page → Building Confidence: The user is considering a specific expedition. Our role is to provide the information and reassurance they need to feel confident that this is the right expedition for them.
  • Booking Flow → Completing the Purchase: The user has made their decision. Our focus is to make the booking process clear, easy, and frictionless so they can confidently complete their purchase.

UX Research

Given the project’s tight timeline, we conducted rapid remote user interviews and analyzed behavioral data from user sessions in Fullstory and Amplitude, including click-through rates and engagement metrics. This helped us understand how users interacted with the departure page and how the different information cards were performing.

Our goal was to optimize the departure search experience, helping users feel more confident and informed when comparing options and deciding whether to book a trip.

Across interviews, we consistently heard the same questions:

Combining these insights with our behavioral data, we identified four key unmet needs:

✓ Cabin availability

✓ Included amenities

✓ Expedition team

✓ Extensions