Alaska Airlines: Modernizing the Travel Experience
Building trust, scaling systems, and turning brand strength into a coherent, commercially effective travel experience by connecting product, engineering, and brand around one shared system.
▸ Senior UI Designer / Jun 2019 – Mar 2021
▸ Manager, Design / Mar 2021 – Dec 2021
+198%
Merchandising Conversion
$194 M
Net Profit Impact
225
New Routes Integrated
#1
J.D. Power Satisfaction
1.0 The Opportunity
A fast-growing brand was outpacing its digital experience
After acquiring Virgin America, Alaska's marketing had built a confident, modern identity, but the website, app, kiosks, and internal tools stayed fragmented, inconsistent, and disconnected from that brand. I became the cross-functional bridge across product, engineering, marketing, and operations that turned brand ambition into product standards.
Bridging brand and digital experience: translating Alaska’s brand into digital principles for a consistent experience everywhere.
2.0 The Solution
Build the system, modernize the journeys, prove it under pressure
A portfolio-level approach: build a shared system, apply it where customer and commercial leverage was highest, then evolve it under real constraints.
System
2.1 Crafting Auro Design System
Journeys
2.2 Core Travel Flows
Resilience
2.3 Leading Through Uncertainty
Growth
2.4 Expansion + Integration
2.1 Crafting Auro Design System
A four-week foundation designed to change how teams worked
I joined a tiger team of three senior UI designers, a principal technologist, and a small engineering group to build Auro, Alaska's first unified design system. In four weeks: a token model, component library, accessibility standards, and interaction patterns teams could apply immediately.
System Guild / Governance Model
Foundations / Accent Colors + New Flows
Layout Patterns / Merch Blocks
Foundations / Type Ramp
Component Overview
Foundations / Spacing
Alaska’s existing digital foundations weren’t keeping pace with the brand or the business. Major launches, promotions, and new product experiences could come alive across advertising, email, social, and physical spaces, then flatten into the same limited templates on alaskaair.com and the app.
I pressure-tested foundational elements like type, color, icons, grids, and templates against Alaska’s highest-value commercial moments, exposing gaps and defining more flexible patterns for merchandising, promotions, content hubs, and major brand moments. Once proven across marketing surfaces, those learnings extended into core transactional experiences like search and booking, creating stronger continuity between brand, digital, and e-commerce.
Designed for commercial scale
2.2 Modernizing Core Travel Flows
Connecting system strategy to the moments that drive revenue and trust
Homepage
Flight Search
Check-in Kiosk
Across Alaska’s homepage, booking flow, and airport kiosks, the underlying problem was the same: legacy patterns built for a business 10–15 years earlier could no longer support dynamic pricing, new fare products, campaign-led merchandising, or evolving airport needs. I led a system-level audit and experience vision that translated those gaps into flexible patterns, templates, and interaction models teams could reuse instead of rebuilding feature by feature. That foundation unlocked richer homepage merchandising, clearer fare comparison and greater trust as Saver and Premium entered the booking experience, and lower-cognitive-load kiosk flows designed around Alaska’s five-minute lobby goal. Together, the work contributed to $194M in booking impact, a 198% lift in merchandising conversion, and faster delivery across product teams.
Connecting system strategy to the moments that drive revenue and trust
Product Principles
JOY
Infuse surprise and delight into every step of the digital guest journey.
EMPATHY
Anticipate guest needs and deliver timely, relevant solutions and information.
EASE
Streamline the guest experience by reducing complexity and eliminating friction.
Brand DNA
Those same principles extended beyond interaction into voice and visual identity. I authored the Brand DNA Guide to translate them into something teams could actually apply shared standards for tone, color, type, and motion, not just a filter for UX decisions.
Patterns, principles, and a shared brand language were now built into the system, ready to scale. Then came the moment that would test all of it at once.
2.3 Leading Through Change
Turning rapid change into clear, coordinated customer experiences
COVID changed the guest journey overnight. I helped align product, content, brand, engineering, legal, and operations around a clearer hierarchy for urgent information, redesigning the homepage around support and rebooking, and adapting the app to guide guests through new requirements.
Alaska returned to pre-COVID passenger levels by summer 2022 and went on to rank #1 in J.D. Power guest satisfaction, company-wide outcomes that clear, consistent design and content helped support.
2.4 Expansion + Integration
Translating alliance strategy into a credible global experience
As Alaska joined the oneworld alliance, I led a design team of 14 (UI and UX designers, a UX writer, senior systems designers, and contract support) across the rollout, coordinating digital surfaces and physical expressions, from livery to boarding passes, so the brand read as one credible global carrier. The work extended Alaska’s experience across partner booking, loyalty, and codeshare journeys, translating alliance complexity into something that still felt simple and distinctly Alaska.
225 routes integrated, marking Alaska's shift from a regional brand to a coherent global carrier.
3.0 The Impact
Design drove revenue, guest satisfaction, and faster delivery
More Work