Dylan Ralke - UX Design - App Consistency

Booking.com

Property Management App

Context

Pulse is Booking.com’s mobile app for partners to manage reservations, availability, and guest communication. Over time, the iOS and Android versions diverged: custom components, inconsistent flows, outdated patterns, and no alignment with the company’s main design system.

This fragmentation slowed development, created inconsistent user experiences, and made scaling features difficult.

The Core Problem

Two separate apps evolved independently, causing inconsistency, inefficiency, and poor maintainability.
Product teams couldn’t scale features or ship improvements across platforms quickly.
For partners, inconsistent flows across iOS and Android made daily management unpredictable and confusing.
Fragmentation slowed feature rollout and increased engineering cost due to duplicate implementations.
Partner support was inconsistent and at times out of date.

My Role

UX Designer working with PMs, engineers, and design systems teams to unify user flows, align components, and standardize the app’s design foundation.

What I Improved

App Audit & System Mapping

Created the baseline understanding needed to fix fragmentation.

What I did

Full UI audit across iOS + Android
Sitemap of all screens with traffic data
Identified missing or broken flows
Documented tech stacks + component origins

Outcome

Leadership and product teams finally had a clear map of the problem’s scale and priorities.
We had a clear understanding of how users currently navigated the app using data.
We had a clear overview of tech fragmentation which helped leadership in planning future staffing and tech approach.

Defining Key Features

Determined which features mattered most to on-the-go property managers and should be prioritized for alignment.

What I did

Ranked flows using traffic + bounce data
Ran surveys and ranking tests with thousands of partners to determine which flows and feature are critical and how they’re performing.
Facilitated Job-to-be-done (JTBD) workshops with Product roles
User-tested daily workflows with local partners

Outcome

Clear feature priorities that guided alignment efforts and roadmap decisions.
Aligned with partners on which flows and features are crucial to them
Created a baseline satification metric with partners on critical flow experience

Design System Alignment

Integrated the partner experience into Booking.com’s global design system while creating partner-specific patterns where needed.

What we did

Partnered with developers to classify each component
Calculated a metric of how much design system adoption there was per screen/overall
Consolidated UI into a shared Figma library
Created patterns specific to partners where global design system patterns couldn’t meet our unique needs.

Outcome

Consistency, faster development cycles, fewer custom builds.
Had a clear metric of design system adoption (around 50%)
Created a plan and updated design of elements and screens to migrate

Quick Wins & Long-Term Refactors

Balanced immediate fixes with broader reworks.

Larger refactors

Some screens or flow required us to refactor them holistcally, so we would approach them more broadly, beta test with small groups, then slowly expose more users to the change so we could adjust or pause if the need came up.

Quick wins

In the case of small fixes that could be measured easily, we ran experiments fixing the elements and aligning them. These quick wins allowed us to standardize smaller components, fix accessibility bugs, and improved performance.

Impact

Established a baseline of design system adoption (around 50%), and saw an increase of 15% with the changes we made
Faster, more accessible flows — especially for high-traffic tasks
Reduced development overhead through shared components
A more trustworthy and predictable partner experience
A scalable foundation for future app updates and design system growth
Partners experienced more predictable navigation and reduced friction between devices.

Reflection

This project pushed me to think in terms of long-term maintainability — not just better UI, but better product velocity and developer experience.

If you’d like to chat or collaborate, feel free to reach out.

Booking.com

Property Management App

Context

Pulse is Booking.com’s mobile app for partners to manage reservations, availability, and guest communication. Over time, the iOS and Android versions diverged: custom components, inconsistent flows, outdated patterns, and no alignment with the company’s main design system.

This fragmentation slowed development, created inconsistent user experiences, and made scaling features difficult.

The Core Problem

Two separate apps evolved independently, causing inconsistency, inefficiency, and poor maintainability.
Product teams couldn’t scale features or ship improvements across platforms quickly.
For partners, inconsistent flows across iOS and Android made daily management unpredictable and confusing.
Fragmentation slowed feature rollout and increased engineering cost due to duplicate implementations.
Partner support was inconsistent and at times out of date.

My Role

UX Designer working with PMs, engineers, and design systems teams to unify user flows, align components, and standardize the app’s design foundation.

What I Improved

App Audit & System Mapping

Created the baseline understanding needed to fix fragmentation.

What I did

Full UI audit across iOS + Android
Sitemap of all screens with traffic data
Identified missing or broken flows
Documented tech stacks + component origins

Outcome

Leadership and product teams finally had a clear map of the problem’s scale and priorities.
We had a clear understanding of how users currently navigated the app using data.
We had a clear overview of tech fragmentation which helped leadership in planning future staffing and tech approach.

Defining Key Features

Determined which features mattered most to on-the-go property managers and should be prioritized for alignment.

What I did

Ranked flows using traffic + bounce data
Ran surveys and ranking tests with thousands of partners to determine which flows and feature are critical and how they’re performing.
Facilitated Job-to-be-done (JTBD) workshops with Product roles
User-tested daily workflows with local partners

Outcome

Clear feature priorities that guided alignment efforts and roadmap decisions.
Aligned with partners on which flows and features are crucial to them
Created a baseline satification metric with partners on critical flow experience

Design System Alignment

Integrated the partner experience into Booking.com’s global design system while creating partner-specific patterns where needed.

What we did

Partnered with developers to classify each component
Calculated a metric of how much design system adoption there was per screen/overall
Consolidated UI into a shared Figma library
Created patterns specific to partners where global design system patterns couldn’t meet our unique needs.

Outcome

Consistency, faster development cycles, fewer custom builds.
Had a clear metric of design system adoption (around 50%)
Created a plan and updated design of elements and screens to migrate

Quick Wins & Long-Term Refactors

Balanced immediate fixes with broader reworks.

Larger refactors

Some screens or flow required us to refactor them holistcally, so we would approach them more broadly, beta test with small groups, then slowly expose more users to the change so we could adjust or pause if the need came up.

Quick wins

In the case of small fixes that could be measured easily, we ran experiments fixing the elements and aligning them. These quick wins allowed us to standardize smaller components, fix accessibility bugs, and improved performance.

Impact

Established a baseline of design system adoption (around 50%), and saw an increase of 15% with the changes we made
Faster, more accessible flows — especially for high-traffic tasks
Reduced development overhead through shared components
A more trustworthy and predictable partner experience
A scalable foundation for future app updates and design system growth
Partners experienced more predictable navigation and reduced friction between devices.

Reflection

This project pushed me to think in terms of long-term maintainability — not just better UI, but better product velocity and developer experience.

If you’d like to chat or collaborate, feel free to reach out.

Booking.com

Property Management App

Context

Pulse is Booking.com’s mobile app for partners to manage reservations, availability, and guest communication. Over time, the iOS and Android versions diverged: custom components, inconsistent flows, outdated patterns, and no alignment with the company’s main design system.

This fragmentation slowed development, created inconsistent user experiences, and made scaling features difficult.

The Core Problem

Two separate apps evolved independently, causing inconsistency, inefficiency, and poor maintainability.
Product teams couldn’t scale features or ship improvements across platforms quickly.
For partners, inconsistent flows across iOS and Android made daily management unpredictable and confusing.
Fragmentation slowed feature rollout and increased engineering cost due to duplicate implementations.
Partner support was inconsistent and at times out of date.

My Role

UX Designer working with PMs, engineers, and design systems teams to unify user flows, align components, and standardize the app’s design foundation.

What I Improved

App Audit & System Mapping

Created the baseline understanding needed to fix fragmentation.

What I did

Full UI audit across iOS + Android
Sitemap of all screens with traffic data
Identified missing or broken flows
Documented tech stacks + component origins

Outcome

Leadership and product teams finally had a clear map of the problem’s scale and priorities.
We had a clear understanding of how users currently navigated the app using data.
We had a clear overview of tech fragmentation which helped leadership in planning future staffing and tech approach.

Defining Key Features

Determined which features mattered most to on-the-go property managers and should be prioritized for alignment.

What I did

Ranked flows using traffic + bounce data
Ran surveys and ranking tests with thousands of partners to determine which flows and feature are critical and how they’re performing.
Facilitated Job-to-be-done (JTBD) workshops with Product roles
User-tested daily workflows with local partners

Outcome

Clear feature priorities that guided alignment efforts and roadmap decisions.
Aligned with partners on which flows and features are crucial to them
Created a baseline satisfaction metric with partners on critical flow experience

Design System Alignment

Integrated the partner experience into Booking.com’s global design system while creating partner-specific patterns where needed.

What we did

Partnered with developers to classify each component
Calculated a metric of how much design system adoption there was per screen/overall
Consolidated UI into a shared Figma library
Created patterns specific to partners where global design system patterns couldn’t meet our unique needs.

Outcome

Consistency, faster development cycles, fewer custom builds.
Had a clear metric of design system adoption (around 50%)
Created a plan and updated design of elements and screens to migrate

Quick Wins & Long-Term Refactors

Balanced immediate fixes with broader reworks.

Quick wins

Standardized common components
Fixed accessibility gaps
Improved load times

Larger refactors

Re-designed critical flows holistically
Beta tested with small partner groups
Rolled out gradually with performance tracking

Impact

Established a baseline of design system adoption (around 50%), and saw an increase of 15% with the changes we made
Faster, more accessible flows — especially for high-traffic tasks
Reduced development overhead through shared components
A more trustworthy and predictable partner experience
A scalable foundation for future app updates and design system growth
Partners experienced more predictable navigation and reduced friction between devices.

Reflection

This project pushed me to think in terms of long-term maintainability — not just better UI, but better product velocity and developer experience.

If you’d like to chat or collaborate, feel free to reach out.