Note: Due to confidentiality agreements, specific details about the platform and proprietary design elements cannot be shared.
Booking.com
Localization Routing UI
- Role
- Product / UX Designer
- Timebound
- 6 months
- Tools
- Figma, Miro, Whiteboard
Design of Booking.com's Localization Team Routing UI
Where we were guessing
We knew localization project managers (LPMs) were stuck waiting on developers.
Unknowns on day one
- Which decisions needed daily edits, and which could stay hard-coded?
- How much "technical" language could LPMs comfortably use?
- How do we create a logic dashboard for such a complex system?
From issues to solutions
Gray areas
- LPMs kept side spreadsheets to track job status
- Ops Slack was full of "quick rule-change" pings
- Non-technical users feared "breaking the tool"
What I did with it
- Built a live dashboard: colour-coded streams, an SLA heat map and sortable queues
- Designed a step-by-step rule wizard that let LPMs add, edit and test routing logic
- Added real-time validation and a drag-and-drop canvas that flagged conflicts inline
Bumps along the way
- Long language names broke the grid; swapped to language codes with a tooltip.
- The wizard needed instant rollback, but the backend had no transactions. Worked with engineers on a "draft" mode that keeps data in a separate table until users hit Publish.
The first validation was direct and red; pilot teams felt criticized. We softened the tone and used inline tips instead of pop-ups.
Leading through the process
- Deep-dive week on routing UIs: I mapped patterns from workflow engines (HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce, Zapier) to understand how they work, then distilled the findings into three design rules we referenced all project long.
- Ran a daily 15-minute huddle with engineering and PM so any rule-builder blockers were surfaced and fixed quickly.
- Shadowed two localization managers during a live rollout; their on-the-spot feedback fed straight into the next sprint's backlog.
Impact
What shipped & why it matters
- Self-service rule builder replaced developer built scripts: ops edits went from 3-day ticket to same-day change.
- Visual dashboard lets LPMs spot stuck jobs early, cutting follow-up pings to dev by half.
- Scalable templates handle new clients without extra code: engineering confirmed zero regressions after launch.
Reflection
LPMs didn't want more control - they wanted safe control. Clear feedback, a confirmation in front of anything risky and an escape hatch (the break-inheritance toggle) let non-technical users move quickly without fear of breaking something.
The main challenge was bridging two worlds. At the first tech kickoff, engineers talked in technical terms like "regex" and "null-safe strings," while I was still figuring out user flows. I was not following the side effects, so I pulled the PM into every design-dev meeting. Their clear explanations kept decisions focused on user needs, not just coding.
Giving operations a tool they can adjust without a developer's help frees engineers for other problems and keeps localization moving. Small wins, but with big impact over time.