With over 40 sites in some of Europe’s most interesting cities, our client wanted to place their hotels at the core of a complete and frictionless travel experience.
Looking beyond the hotel as a destination but as a facilitator of travel, we developed a hybrid product that spanned both spatial and digital design. Creating a complete guest experience that makes good travel easy.
Streamline the hotel guest experience by transforming how the hotel operates as well as how it sits in the greater context of the trip as a whole. Improve guest retention by creating a deeper connection between guests and the company. Enable guests with seamless access to the company, their trips and their stay.
Principal designer leading the Architects, UX, and App Development teams in the project. As the key point of contact between our client and our team I had to ensure we communicated the clients objectives through a complete user experience that merged both digital and physical deliverables.
Whilst the brief was clear from the offset, it was broad in its scope. To kickstart the project we conducted a series of in-depth interviews with the project stakeholders to define a set of clear project goals.
Initially we separated our investigation into two parts, looking at the spatial and digital requirements in isolation in order to understand the range of each. We knew the success of the project rested in the successful combination of both, so such we conducted a third and final round of interviews to define the outcomes that let us achieve both the spatial and digital objectives.
This highlighted a key problem within the current process, but the reasoning behind why there were so many iterations was unclear at this phase. As such we decided to investigate further by uncovering the design team’s user flow in defining the design brief.
To quantify the project goals and set tangible targets for the project we began by surveying the current state of our clients hotels and operations. Surveying three existing sites we were able to deduct current averages for guest capacity, number of staff, length of stay and operational layout. These insights set the benchmark values we were to improve upon through our interventions.
Analyzing the historical data we had uncovered from our spatial survey we began to devise the spatial strategy. By rethinking the current operational layouts we were able to uncover the spatial interventions that could unlock the benchmark values we had set to our project goals.
Utilising their vast knowledge of the hospitality industry, we strategized with the client over a two day workshop on the new spatial experience of the hotel. Starting from a point of knowledge let us pave the way towards discovery and the digital strategy, something that is relatively new to this industry.
Structuring our research process from spatial to digital enabled us to quickly test potential digital solutions against the clients knowledge of the users mental model. In the process laying the foundations through which to devise a digital strategy that brings both the digital and spatial experience together.
Considering our clients goals and our users' mental model of the hotel experience, we derived that a minimalist pod model would satisfy both constraints and perform better than the client's current room model.
Deciding to base our spatial design on the pod model, we started by calculating the ROI for a single user Pod; this helped us establish a unit of measure through which we queried historical guest data to design variants on the single pod (single XR, Double Pod, Double XR). Having decided the types of rate-able spaces we used the same data set to determine their quantities, making sure that the core guest demographics are fulfilled.
Deriving the General Arrangement of the first hotel site through this quantifiable process ensured that future designs on other hotel sites can be tested in respect to the performance of the first. Enabling the design team to meaningfully iterate both the variants and quantities of the pods as the brand grew.
Having laid out the spatial design we continued to complete the guest experience by integrating the digital layer of their stay. We started by anchoring our system architecture to the spatial layout and functions, introducing smart devices at key touchpoints between the guest’s physical and digital experience during their stay.
After integrating the digital features that would enhance the guest experience in the hotel, we started to incorporate elements that would be useful outside the hotel. With each design round with the relevant stakeholders we developed the system to support both spatial and digital functionality.
Through this holistic design approach we deduced a binding layer that through its architecture enables both digital and spatial attributes to communicate and enhance each other’s capabilities.
Through white-boarding several user journeys at different phases of the trip, we grouped the features we identified in our system architecture diagram to establish our key screens. We then tested several layouts and navigation styles through paper prototyping to derive our initial app wireframes.
Investing the time to establish the context in which the app sits we were able to design the wireframes with relative ease. Using them in tandem with the system architecture and General Arrangement we communicated our design decisions to the client throughout the iteration process.
The wireframes established a design direction for the app which we then developed into low fidelity mock-ups. At this level of detail we were able to test specific design features internally with the design team and client. This gave us enough feedback to develop a branded prototype to test with our users.
Creating a comprehensive prototype study took a considerable amount of time but it was crucial as this was to be launched as a full feature product (compared to an MVP) to an existing client base.
High fidelity prototyping uncovered key pain points in a complex guest experience spanning both the digital and physical aspects of our product. The most notable was the find my pod feature which we integrated by upgrading both the system architecture as well as several layers of the in app experience.
Enabling the hotel guests to interact with the prototype also let us validate the product through its intended users. Surveying the user after engaging with the app we felt confident that their experience of the trip had been enhanced and our clients goals met.
This was a multi layered project with a hard deadline. Correlating both the spatial and digital design decisions was particularly challenging. A lot went right in this respect however we did suffer a few setbacks along the way, nonetheless they were learnings that we can apply in the future. This project fundamentally highlighted to me the importance of setting an explicit scope and continuously refocusing our stakeholders on the project goals. This approach proved crucial in meeting our tight deadline especially during the latter phase of the project when there was a drastic influx of new ideas. Setting real project goals at the start made sure we avoided scope creep and the team could pull through together and ship the product on time.
Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the project was seeing my small and agile team mitigate the risks of such a layered project. Keeping focused when we were under a significant amount of pressure and high output requirements. Together we produced a product that challenged a long standing mental model for our users, through efficient collaboration with them we were able to see both our design process and an industry transformed.
