As part of the VCCP digital UX team, re-designing the online cruise booking flow for Saga holidays.
Saga wanted a complete refresh of their digital experiences, from insurance to cruises. Although they had a large pool of loyal customers they felt their current online offering looked and felt dated, thereby impacting their ability to win over new customers.
I was brought in to lead the transformation of Saga’s cruise booking experience – a journey that had become bloated and difficult to navigate due to years of incremental changes. A key challenge was ensuring the new experience would be accessible and intuitive for a broad user base, many of whom have varying levels of digital literacy and unique accessibility needs.
This redesign represented a significant step forward for Saga, touching multiple parts of the business. You can see the transformation in action in the accompanying video – and catch my cameo at 00:36 during a usability session I facilitated.
To fully understand the legacy booking flow, I led working sessions with Saga’s leadership team, leveraging their deep knowledge of customer behaviour and internal constraints.
Key insights included:
Using Adobe Analytics, I uncovered that prospective customers frequently returned to review or amend their holiday packages before purchasing. This insight validated that a non-linear, flexible booking journey was essential – customers needed to explore, compare, and ‘tinker’ without losing context or progress.
"It was important to first lean into the Saga leadership teams' experience and knowledge of their customers."
Informed by customer behaviour and aligned with broader efforts across the Saga digital estate, we defined our core design goals:
I developed simple, annotated user flows to guide early conversations with product and engineering teams. These flows helped visualise complexity without prematurely introducing design decisions, allowing for clear discussions around system limitations and feasibility.
Much of my early ideation centred on the relationship between configuration and confirmation – i.e. how users could select options while still seeing how their full holiday was coming together.
Two main directions were explored:
The latter approach better suited Saga’s audience. It allowed customers to navigate freely, revisit decisions, and build confidence throughout. This design also reduced cognitive load and preserved context at every step.
We tested the full prototype extensively, and the feedback was consistently positive. The journey was described as clear, intuitive, and modern – with many participants completing it unprompted.
“It’s a doddle.”
“Much easier to use than the existing site.”
“More modern looking... visually this is way more pleasing on the eye.”
“More clear, easy to use and up to date.”
I collaborated closely with the UI team to ensure the clarity and breathing space from wireframes translated seamlessly into high-fidelity designs. The updated Saga design language was applied throughout, resulting in a polished, brand-aligned experience that felt consistent across their digital touchpoints.
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