Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance · Client-sponsored project
Turning a ticket receipt into a pre-arrival guide
Over 10 weeks, our team partnered with the HHI Concours to improve its visitor journey. I led research with target audience and stakeholders, then designed and prototyped the ticket confirmation email, the one message every guest receives between buying a ticket and arriving.
- Problem
- After buying tickets, guests were left to figure out parking and arrival on their own.
- Solution
- A confirmation email that works as a pre-arrival guide.
- Result
- 87% of usability participants (26 of 30) preferred it over the original.
The problem
The experience stopped at checkout.
“Biggest challenge was finding parking… Ultimately I had to pull up to the golf course itself and ask the cop who stopped me from entering where we actually need to park.”
Survey respondent
The HHI Concours asked us to reimagine its end-to-end guest experience. As research lead, I interviewed guests and stakeholders, including the operations manager, and helped synthesize our findings into a mental model map. Together with 447 survey responses, a clear pattern emerged:
- When planning their visit, guests looked for two things most: the event schedule (84%) and parking & transportation (54%).
- On event day, getting there was the hardest part. Parking and transportation was the most-cited challenge.
Yet the one message every ticket holder receives, the old confirmation email, only confirmed the purchase. It said nothing about the schedule, where to park, or how to get in.
Why this touchpoint
After a prioritization workshop with the client, the team split up across the visitor journey. While teammates redesigned the ticket purchase site, I took on the post-purchase experience as product designer.
Guests needed arrival information before event day, and the confirmation email was the one place guaranteed to reach them then:
- Every ticketed guest receives it, right when they start planning their trip.
- It already gets opened. No new app or new behavior is needed.
- It is low-cost for a non-profit organization to adopt.
The design
Before
The original email confirmed the transaction. It left guests with little guidance for the next part of their journey: getting to the event.
After
The final experience connects a clear confirmation with the practical details of getting there. HHI’s visual identity carries through from the welcome to the arrival guide.
Ticket status first.
Event Venue & Parking
- Ticket status first. The QR code and ticket details sit at the top, so guests can confirm their purchase at a glance.
- Built for action, not just reading. Add to Calendar and Plan Your Trip turn information into next steps.
- Schedule and parking, front and center. Experience planning and venue & parking information are all in one email, no searching required.
- On-brand and accessible. It follows HHI’s visual identity, with readable contrast and clear hierarchy.
One key iteration
We ran usability testing and refined the interface based on participant feedback.
First version
“Both the venue and parking lot are shown as Google Maps thumbnails, but they looks like the same. What’s the difference?”
Feedback from usability test participant
After version
“These two are much clearer and easier to understand.”
Feedback from usability test participant
I built the email as a working prototype with AI-assisted coding in Figma Make. That let us test a realistic, clickable email within days rather than handing off static mockups.
View Figma PrototypeResults
87%
of participants preferred the redesigned email.
26 of 30 participants in task-based usability testing.
Participants described it as especially clear, and singled out Add to Calendar, the parking location, and Plan Your Trip as the most useful additions.
Reflection
Using AI to speed up team decisions.
Using AI to synthesize hundreds of survey responses and prototype in days helped our team move quickly from findings to a testable idea. Having something real to react to made team discussions more concrete than debating static sketches. Speed only helped because I still checked every AI summary against the raw data and kept every design choice grounded in what users told us.
Small touchpoints, big leverage.
We found far more problems than we could solve. Picking one message every guest already receives taught me to weigh reach and feasibility, not just how severe a problem is.
Full research and design process available on request.