Portfolio

With digital payments’ rising popularity, fraud is a growing concern for the hospitality industry. Credit-card chargebacks cost significant time and money, leading to preventative enhanced security measures like strong customer authentication (SCA). SCA requires a two-factor verification before processing payment. In some parts of the world, it’s a fact of life, but it can feel disarming to someone encountering it for the first time.

While we were optimizing our SCA experience, a product owner on the payments program team reached out with a separate request to review an FAQ page that had been created to explain payment verification emails some years prior. These emails were no longer being sent: Should we do something else with the page or just delete it?

My stance on FAQs has softened over the years because of use cases like this one. Since SCA happens via the user’s credit card provider, our options for clarifying and reassuring within our own UI were limited. Plus, we had recently expanded digital payment methods with more enhancements planned.

When I considered intuitive places to talk about payment security, my next thought was almost always “OK, but who will see it?”

So I redesigned the page with real frequently asked questions.

Why it works

• Translates complex concepts into plain language.
• Content is search-friendly and LLM-friendly.
• Content is legally compliant (after only one round of review!) and consistent with brand tone of voice.
• Anchor navigation and semantic headings allow for further expansion.

The problem

At a large organization with many teams creating content, consistency can be a challenge. Our team designed the website and app products, but a lot of the words come from systems and from writers on other teams. Sometimes they come from UI/UX or product managers or developers. We needed a home for the style guide that anyone publishing on a digital platform could access, not a collection of forwarded PDFs that would vanish at the whims of the data retention policy.

Inspiration on the run

A guest on Kristina Halvorson’s Content Strategy podcast mentioned that her team used a “white-label Grammarly” to automate their style guide and I knew that was exactly what we needed. Unfortunately, I was on a run so I forgot about it almost immediately. But I later attended the Confab content strategy conference, where WRITER was a vendor! My memory was refreshed.

Making it happen

I’d barely unpacked my bags before I started researching WRITER and comparable products. When I was sure I wanted to proceed, I made the case to my leadership and pitched the product to my peers on other teams. That was the easy part. As a newer manager, I got a crash course in procurement from statements of work to security review.

Soft-launched in late 2022, the style guide

• covers brand and marketing guidelines
• defines industry vocabulary
• sets standards for readable, usable, and accessible content.

Users could submit questions and suggestions via Airtable, and my team and I regularly deliberated on what should be included as products evolved and new programs launched.

Finding new use cases

In 2024, we expanded our relationship with WRITER to include its generative AI features for quicker content ideation, creation, and editing. We also introduced guidelines for internal-facing products that require specialized vocabulary and a more professional tone. These guidelines were socialized with product and business partners to help them better understand our methods.

Successfully scaling style

From June 2024 – June 2025, WRITER scanned more than 2 million words for our teams and offered suggestions for style, clarity, and adherence to brand guidelines. It has generated or rewritten 1.4 million words, saving countless hours.

Content design is identifying what users need and determining what content best suits that need. Sometimes that content is a PowerPoint presentation. This deck has inspired many “Aha!” moments among partners who are working with content designers for the first time.

Hilton added 100,000 rooms to its portfolio in 2024. On top of the yearly pipeline of new openings, the company acquired two brands and entered partnerships with two others. This marked a different approach — previous new brands like Motto and Tempo were built from scratch, not acquired. Integrating the new brands and partners into the digital experience was an all-hands-on-deck effort.

Throughout the website’s booking experience, chips highlight key attributes. One, simply labeled “New,” appeared in hotel search results next to new hotels. Business requirements limited the qualifying criteria to hotels built within a certain timeframe. A search filter for “New Hotels” used the same criteria.

A chance to enhance

Given the portfolio’s recent growth, we recognized that “New” may not be descriptive enough, and qualitative research confirmed our suspicions. Revisiting “New” would be the first step in clarifying these chips and filters for the user.

To start, I mapped out the different types of “new:”

• just-built hotels
• hotels that had been newly converted from other brands
• hotels that had been reflagged within the portfolio
• newly acquired hotels
• and so on.

I pitched “Newly built” as the third variant to test against “New” and “New hotel” (this option was for parity with the aforementioned filter)

Clear language makes a measurable impact

In a win for clear language, the “Newly built” variant increased clickthrough by 2.5% and boosted revenue per visitor by 1.5%. This revealed opportunities to experiment further and find better ways to highlight the many, many other types of “new.”

An industry-leading feature, automated upgrades allow elite loyalty members to use contactless check-in features without sacrificing potential upgrades. These upgrades are awarded 72 hours before a guest’s stay, at which point they receive an email or push notification.

The challenge

Hotel guests cite the potential for upgrades as a key (no pun intended) factor in their preference for front-desk check-in. They appreciate the personal touch and the human interaction — and after a global pandemic, this was more important to them than ever. However, due to the aforementioned pandemic, hotels had fewer resources available and needed to minimize crowding and close contact for health and safety reasons.

The solution

We identified moments in the experience where we could recognize members’ loyalty and invoke the same “surprise and delight” they feel at the front desk. In a collaborative effort across multiple delivery pods and cross-functional teams, I provided onboarding and celebratory messaging across platforms and throughout the user journey.

Why it works

• “Confirmed” reassures the guest that they don’t need to go to the front desk to request an upgrade
• “Complimentary” reassures the guest that they will not need to pay extra for their new room
• “Thanks for being a Gold member!” uses familiar language — the exact words front desk agents use! — and reinforces that the upgrade is a benefit of their membership and a reward for their loyalty

One of the factors slowing digital key adoption among hotel guests was the inability to share a key. Digital Key sharing was one of many innovations fast-tracked by the covid pandemic and its necessity for physical distance and leaner staffs. I wrote the screens for the experience.

From HospitalityNet:

In a first for a major hospitality company, Digital Key Share will allow more than one guest to have access to their room’s Digital Key, which turns the free Hilton Honors app on their smartphones into a room key.

Another hospitality innovation introduced in the post-covid “revenge travel” era. By eliminating the need for a phone call, Connecting Rooms make life easier for front desk and call center agents as well as guests.

From The Points Guy:

Hilton even acknowledges that booking connecting rooms hasn’t always been seamless. Previously, you had to call or otherwise reach out to your hotel ahead of time to request a connecting room. While hotels rarely guarantee it, many typically accommodate the requests if possible — but you wouldn’t find out until arriving at the hotel. Other hotels, such as Marriott and Hyatt offer connected rooms, but they aren’t guaranteed — and can cost you.

Naming the feature

I, personally, did not name “Confirmed Connecting Rooms by Hilton.” But, we were involved early enough that we were able to validate the name with users to make sure they understood the feature. Connecting rooms are also commonly known as adjoining rooms and there is another in-stay product with a similar name. I advocated strongly for “connecting” given the double meaning, plus my desk research indicated that it was more commonly known.

Defining the feature

“Side-by-side rooms linked by a lockable door.” I wrote a descriptive line that could be used just about anywhere, from tooltip to tagline. The alliteration and and rhythm made it easy to remember.

Onboarding the feature

We introduced a new component to flag the new feature at relevant points in the experience. It was important for us to remind users that it was innovative and unique in the industry.

Clarifying the experience

Since the feature was new, we had to earn users’ trust. I wrote alerts and instructive copy to reassure at every step, so future guests would feel confident that they didn’t have to call the hotel.

More usability enhancements to the Hilton Honors web experience, replacing a sidebar navigation with a responsive landing page.

Hilton employees and approved friends and family members are eligible for generous room discounts. This page previously detailed the specifics of the program in FAQ format, which should not be the primary source of information. Intuitive groupings and scannable copy in plain language create a more navigable experience for both audiences.

To ensure users understood the terms, I also wrote a series of friendly and instructive error messages to simplify complicated situations, including:

• When the user is out of nights
• When the user has a Go Hilton stay booked during the chosen dates
• When the rate is no longer available because another user has booked it (with more than 150,000 employees, plus their friends and family — you snooze, you lose)

Later enhancements included the ability for employees and their family and friends to limit their search results to hotels with available Go Hilton rates.

A single source for information about loyalty perks that offers a more direct, concise and user-friendly breakdown than its text-heavy predecessor.

Challenges

• Research indicated that users preferred the ability to compare tiers side-by-side, which presented challenges for accessibility and the responsiveness of the design
• Users preferred a high-level, more practical overview of benefits, while stakeholders wanted to use the page more to market the program in general. Similar conflicts had caused previous pages to stall in revision.

Finding ways to work together

Understanding a partner’s feedback style and meeting them where they are can break down barriers to productivity. I recognized that with multiple stakeholders and a chain of approvers, a copy doc just would not do. To limit the amount of back-and-forth, I recommended a peer editing session with two of our key partners. I shared my screen and walked through the copy in a prototype, explaining rationales and noting feedback along the way. The result? A much smoother ride from concept to delivery.

While hotel stays are the primary method, the Hilton Honors program offers members several other ways to earn and use Points. Users weren’t aware of these flexible ways to maximize their membership, despite the information being readily available.

Fewer clicks, more context

The experiences and dining platforms, partnerships, and transfer/gifting/pooling features required users to link their accounts on a vendor’s site, which essentially meant that each feature had two landing pages. We condensed about 14(!) pages of this repetitive and confusing content into this tidy one-page overview.

Signed-in members see a different but similar version of this page with relevant links, personalized with details including their number of available Points.

Why it works

• Data-informed hierarchy matches users’ ranking of features as indicated by research.
• Use of headings and short, succinct copy quickly gets the point across (no pun intended).
• Active voice centers the user and their personal benefit.