Nora: NCL’s first AI Assistant
The Challenge
The process of booking a cruise is innately complex, especially for guests who have never set sail before. With so many different ports, ships, and itineraries to choose from, it takes up to 64 factors to consider before someone books a cruise. From the moment of their first consideration, it also takes up to 18 months before a guest embarks on their actual voyage.
Solution: The cost of this complex digital experience has a significant impact, and an improved search experience could make a difference by increasing the number of bookings and improving customer lifetime value. That’s where Nora AI comes to play a key role.
Bringing Real Outcomes
The Approach & Involvement
Our teams kicked off with a four-week innovation sprint to iterate through solutions that could simplify the cruise-booking process. In this short time frame, we developed a prototype of a digital itinerary search assistant, which then became the vision concept for the one we executed on the next phase.
Production Involvement:
• As a design lead, I worked on an agile environment, supporting devs and product owners, gathering insights from user testing to bring impactful experiences to leadership and final users of the platform
• Design system contribution & UX/UI Design
• Marketing Assets / Design Direction
Driving More Bookings, at Higher Value
Now live and available to NCL’s website visitors across the United States, Nora has significantly reduced the complexity guests face when planning a cruise. Additionally, Nora will continue to serve as a powerful data source for NCL, allowing the cruise line to gain deeper insights into guest preferences to boost ongoing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Search specific user needs
• Guests can simply ask Nora for a family-friendly cruise packed with shore excursions and great value, and she’ll instantly suggest tailored options that match their preferences.
• Beyond trip planning, Nora also provides real-time support, answering questions and guiding guests through details like boarding times through conversational language.
Integration with the Current Experience
Since Nora AI was built as an external experience within Norwegian Cruise Line’s platform, I led multiple discovery rounds to identify the most strategic, contextual entry points—ensuring the tool surfaced at moments that aligned naturally with user intent and needs.
Save time and find unique and personalized results
Instead of going through 64 steps before finding the perfect cruise or making a final decision, users can now narrow down the search to a few that are personalized for what they are looking for in minutes, using:
• Suggested & Personalized Topics/Prompts
• Natural Language Search
• Curated results that direct the user to the payment funnel
• Option to share with other cruise members
End-to End Involvement
To see the Live tool, Click Here