{ OVERVIEW }
Over the summer, I interned with the UX team at Travel & Leisure Co. to rethink how we interact with user research. I worked on an innovation project to transform user personas into dynamic, conversational tools. By leveraging AI, we proved how designers can engage with research data in real time, turning passive documentation into an active, collaborative partner throughout the entire design process.
{ THE CHALLENGE }
{ WHAT I DID }
I built an interactive, conversational user persona using an advanced LLM. I trained the custom model on detailed user bios, goals, and pain points while engineering strict guardrails to eliminate AI drift, transforming traditional user research into a dynamic and factually accurate tool for rapid design validation.
{ THE RESULT }
A persona that could talk back.
I developed an interactive AI persona that synthesized insights from internal documentation to help the UX team explore and validate ideas for the Club Wyndham new activities feature. The persona enabled rapid concept exploration.
"What would make you book activities ahead of time?"
"Honestly, what makes me book ahead is knowing that the experience is popular or has limited spots so I don't risk missing out. It also helps if booking early gives me a better price or a more relaxed trip because everything is sorted in advanced"
{ WHY IS THIS NEEDED? }
Instant Context & Discoverability: Designers can instantly discover how a specific user segment prefers to book activities.
Proactive Ideation Support: The AI assistant acts as a brainstorming co-pilot, generating contextual ideas for hotel activity suggestions based on highly granular constraints (e.g., traveling group size, presence of children, and specific interest categories).
At the end of my internship, I presented the project to an audience, including fellow interns, executives, and the Director of UX.
To the right is a kind comment I received from the Director of IT Digital Engineering following the presentation.
© Laura Suarez 2025