Objective

Siebel is a CRM system used by both call centers and retail stores to sell and manage their products and customer accounts.

The aim was to build a more intuitive and smarter system to significantly reduce handling times and the propensity of human error to facilitate a better experience for customers and users.

My Role

I was brought onboard as someone with significant delivery experience to shape the project and the Agile process, as well as mentor junior and mid-weight Interaction/UI designers.

• To educate Vodafone teams on how to design within an Agile framework
• Turn complex requirements into epics and user stories
• To facilitate workshops with users, subject matter experts and senior business, design and technical stakeholders
• Map design deliverables to key success metrics of reducing call time and increasing right-first-time transactions
• Present the proposed solution to Vodafone C-Suite Executives

Challenges

• The CRM contains black-box code, meaning developers can only access some of the code. This placed the designers on a steep learning curve of what is/isn't possible
• The team contained some designers who were new to Agile development
• Client is based in Newbury, the design team in London
• Offshore development team in a different time zone

Design Decisions

Linear journeys

To create linear customer journeys from a seemingly non-existent flow - presenting the right information to the agent at the right time

Contextual information

To reduce the number of fields shown to the user to the minimum required to complete a task

Feedback

An existing Siebel pain point was the lack of success or failure confirmation messages, leading to uncertainty and mistakes

Automation

The existing system requires most tasks to be performed manually, and sometimes multiple times. For example, a customer address must be entered 3 times to cover a primary address, credit vetting address and postal address. The new design leverages automation to store the one address against the three fields where required

Results

The Vodafone C-suite team were impressed with the initial designs and a 3-month re-skinning project eventuated into a 12-month service design and delivery project.

Phase 1 designs have been delivered and is currently in development. Release is scheduled for April 2018.

Objective

To streamline the customer ordering journey of My Web Valet responsive application to promote more customer interactions

My Role

To provide usability and customer experience direction for the iRiS My Web Valey white label web application

• Redesign the food and beverage ordering flow
• Create a flexible design to suit guest and hotel provided devices
• Liase with key personel from Hotel Advisory Board - representatives from Starwood, Mandarin Oriental, Trump and Delaware North hotels
• Create prototypes for usability testing
• Conduct usability testing sessions

Challenges

• Design had to support each hotel brand applying their own 'skin' based on their brand guidelines
• Minimal reporting and analytics available
• Design had to be flexible to suit hotels with and without imagery

Design Decisions

Progressive disclosure

Moved the sign-in process to the end of the ordering journey to increase the amount of customers progessing through the funnel

Recommendations

Introduced 'chef recommendations' and 'food pairing'

Information acrhitecture

Introduced accordion style sections and categories to contain large amounts of information. This complimented the need to display items both with and without imagery.

Filtering

Introduced a filtering system to allow the users to refine the large amounts of information often promoted by the hotels

Time relevance

Designed a time appropriate up-sell feature to drive incremental sales. The new system drives marketing messages which promotes items at the appropriate time. Happy hour!

Forgiving

Previously if a user made a mistake, such as ordered a the wrong sauce on their meal, the needed to delete the item from their cart and start again. With new My Web Valet, users can edit their 'modifiers' from withing the cart. There's no need to delete your item and start again.

Informative

Most people in tech have heard about the love of the Dominos pizza tracker. When a user has placed an order, they want to know when they're going to get it. The new order tracker was an MVP solution to keeping customers informed on when their order is likely to be arriving. It leverages the newwly designed 'status' workflow and generates a message notification to the user each time the order has changed hands.

Re-ordering

Is one cocktail enough? In a 'shout' with the boys? The re-order feature lets you see your order history and place the same order again, without having to search for a product and go through the entire cart process.

Results

Acceptance by the Hotel Advisory Board to move into production across Kempinski, IHG and Waldorf hotel groups

Being rolled out across the entire Accor Group (3000+ hotels) and utilised in part by the Marriot mobile application

Objective

To design a guest concierge native application for iOS and Android devices. The application should allow the user to virtually explore the resort, facilities and services and provide personalised communication to drive conversion through reservations, booking and trip planning, arrival information, on-property services, departure and post stay experience.

The primary focus of phase one was to provide a food and beverage ordering service and waterpark information and bookings through a native application. The app would be deemed successful through high guest satisfaction surveys, an increase in incremental direct transactions and at least 10% of hotel stay guests downloading the app (50,000 downloads within first 12 months).

My Role

To lead design and set customer experience direction for both iOS and Android applications

• Facilitate requirements and design workshops in Dubai with key stakeholders
• Review and adapt Atlantis.com personas
• Collaborative sketch sessions
• Atlantis.com architecture review
• Design application architecture that compliments the website that also harnesses the benefits of a native application
• Create wireframes and prototypes
• Conduct usability testing
• Liase with iOS and Android developers

Challenges

• The native application had to build dynamically through a CMS so that the client could update the app content without app store releases
• The application heirarchy had to follow the structure the iRiS CMS allowed for
• Items that can be purchased in the app could come from a number of outlets in the resort, meaning I had to design for multiple shopping carts
• Each outlet has its own opening and delivery hours. Users needed to clearly understand where and when they could order
• The mobile apps needed to support multiple languages - including those read right-to-left
• Remote development team

Design Decisions

Upsell

A key driver of the project was an increase in food and beverage revenue. To help meet this goal I designed an upsell service that recommends items that would compliment their order

Information architecture

The app needed to contain every item from 23 on-site restaurants. Information architecture was of upmost importance in creating a successful app. I decided the best way to contain the data within the constraints was to employ an accordion style layout. This complimented the need to display items both with and without imagery

Navigation

To expose navigation items on the home screen for discoverability and easy access for those who don't use the app frequently

Imagery

Atlantis, The Palm is a picturesque 5-star resort. From the food to the bedroom, everything is visually appealing. The pictures tell the story

Push notifications

Users need to be kept informed of the status of their order. Rather than opening the app to check the status of the order, I utilised the app messaging I designed to inform the customer of the progress of the order. When the hotel restaurants changed the status of the order, a customer would receive a message in the app. This would trigger a push notification so the customer could know the status, even with a locked smartphone

Pre order

To introduce a pre-ordering service so that users could place orders from their desired outlet at any time of the day or night, regardless of whether the outlet was open or not

Results

After a successful phase 1, phase 2 got the green light to move into development. Phase 2 incorporates location based marketing messages to let users know of current offers based on their physical location.

Objective

Provide a messaging platform to allow communication between a guest and hotel that compliments traditional methods of communication.

My Role

• Provide the client with designs to work across desktop, tablet and mobile
• Provide desktop and mobile designs for the hotel management system
• Facilitate workshops with external clients to gather requirements
• Create wireframes and prototypes for usability testing
• Conduct usability testing
• Present prototypes to C-suite clients

Challenges

• Provide one solution to work for both 2-star and 5-star hotels
• To integrate within the existing customer CMS architecture
• Provide a seamless way to associate messages to existing app features such as In Room Dining orders and Concierge requests

Design Decisions

Threads

All orders submitted by the user to the hotel create a message thread for guests and staff to communicate information related to the order e.g "Your order is on the way". This makes it easy for any staff member to get a holistic view of the customers requests and handle the response accordingly

Simplified communication

I reimagined the messaging service and amalgamated the existing forms of communication provided in the white label application - 'Orders', 'Services' and 'Requests' into one screen labelled as 'Messages'

Message priority

Develop a status system for hotel staff to assign and prioritise messages based on time, importance and actionability

Be informed

Enable automatic 'read' notifications between guests and staff

Speed

Provide editable template responses for staff to quickly reply to common guest requests

Personalisation

Create an avatar system to create a more personalised experience for guests, knowing they are speaking to a human rather than a bot

Results

Successful integration into the iRiS GXP CMS. The new service allows hotel staff to assign a status to messages. Messages composed by either the guest or the hotel can be transitioned through a status workflow which can be tailored to suit each department in any hotel

Optional integration with some POS systems can allow the POS to trigger the status within the CMS, meaning less manual handling by staff and a more accurate representation of the status of the order

Guests no longer have to guess whether someone has received their message and whether it's being actioned. The new status system and 'read' functionality keep the user informed at all times

Uptake by the Accor hotel group and being rolled out to over 3000 hotels

Objective

To provide users with the ability to control their hotel room television and browse an electronic program guide from an in-room provided tablet or a guest's own device

My Role

To set design and usability direction through mobile and tablet wireframes and prototypes

• Gathered requirements
• Produced wireframes
• Liaised with middleware provider to discuss opportunities and constraints
• Created prototypes for usability testing
• Conducted usability testing sessions
• Presented prototypes to middleware and development teams for technical validation
• Worked closely with senior Waldorf stakeholders to ensure alignment and buy-in of design direction

Challenges

• Latency between the mobile interface and television
• Creating a design where multiple instances of the application could control multiple televisions within one hotel room or suite
• Syncing between multiple devices on a variety of operating systems
• Complex interface to create an interactive prototype due to many moving parts
• Translation of the text-heavy application into multiple languages within the same design

Design Decisions

Multi tasking

Designed an interface to allow guests to browse a tv guide on a device so that others within the room can continue watching the current program. This also prevented any latency issues of controlling an epg on screen from a mobile device

Breadth

Provided a scrollable table structure rather than a list to allow access to a greater number of programs

Reminders

Introduced 'set reminder' feature to ensure a desired program is not missed

Filtering

Designed filtering of channels to allow users to find a program, on their designed channel, at their desired time, or in their desired language

Searchable

Created an in-app search feature that returns user search results of both programs and channels

Results

Implementation by Waldorf Astoria into their in-room tablets for all rooms within the newly built Beverly Hills hotel.

Built into the Waldorf Guest Valet mobile application to be installed on guests own devices.

Objective

The objective of the Kickstarter project was to maximise the sales opportunity in nib's peak June/July period. A small team was formed and tasked with the problem of how best to sell two new health insurance products provided by the Product team.

My Role

• Determine the best way to position products online
• Explore personas
• Design UX Architecture
• Facilitate sketching sessions with the wider team
• Create prototypes for usability testing
• Produce finalised visual design for development

Challenges

• Small team consisting of Product Owner, Front End Developer and UX Designer
• Minimal access to a back-end developer
• 10-week project from inception to production to meet marketing scheduling
• Determining how the products fit within the existing information architecture
• Navigationl structure
• Obtaining buy-in from the wider company within time constraints to make homepage and navigational changes

Design Decisions

Mobile-first

Optimised for mobile as the target market was 20-30 year old professionals and research determined they were likely to be browsing whilst commuting or during lunch breaks

Comparison

People make decisions by comparison, especially for commodity based products. An overview page was designed to place the new products side-by-side to compare 'at a glance’

Needs analysis

Designed and developed a needs analysis tool for the homepage to funnel customers into the new or existing range of products

Price motivators

Price was a key motivator for purchase for the target market therefore it had be prominent and accessible with minimal customer input

Results

Exceeded the goal of 400 sales in the June/July period. Sales of the Kickstarter range of products contributed to one-third of all online sales.

We successfully converted 'new to market' leads into customers and the entire purchase journey could be completed on a mobile device.

Objective

To design a native Windows application that provides the ability to support offline playback of Prime Video content on Windows 10 devices.

My Role

• Design Lead for the new application
• Working closely with Product Management to prioritise features
• Design and test the download and offline playback customer experience
• Create prototypes for guerrilla testing
• Present concepts to senior leadership
• Produce finalised visual design
• Handoff spec for development
• Design QA

Challenges

• The scrum team began work before I joined the team as Design Lead, thus I was playing catch-up. I had to reset expectations around timeframes of deliverables. Some of the pages and components that had already been built, without design, required rebuilding. I had to earn trust from the team to get buy-in to accept and champion the change.
• Designing for a complex architecture consisting of a Native layer wrapped around a Single Page Application. For example, the navigation was unaware of the state of the page which proved problematic when resizing elements without degradation.
• Maintaining cross-client consistency whilst respecting Microsoft Fluent Design guidelines. Prime Video exists on many platforms: mobile apps, 1st party devices, 3rd party devices, web, and now Windows 10. This app had to look and feel like it belonged in the family whilst respecting both Windows patterns and customers' preconceived ideas of how Prime Video looks, feels & functions.

Design Decisions

Downloads architecture

Downloads and offline usage was the primary use-case for the app. Many of my design decisions were based on this use case, from the 'Download' button in the buy box, through to empty states, offline states, banners and navigation.

Navigation

The navigation was to live on the Native layer, meaning it had to be rebuilt as we couldn't just port over the website navigation. Microsoft Fluent Design offers multiple layouts but leans into side navigation and is the most common among Windows applications. I hypothesised that side navigation is best suited to our platform, particularly when browsing for something to watch. Side navigation also allows for easier scanability through navigational items and is more extensible.

The Prime Video navigation differs per country/region, and is supported in languages that are read both left-to-right and right-to-left.

Profile switcher

This new application release coincided with the release of the Profiles on Prime Video. I designed a way for customers to quickly efforlessly select their profile rather than navigating to a page to select 'Who's Watching?' and returning again. This prevents 'pogo-sticking' between pages.

Empty states

With a key use case of the app being downloads and offline playback, I wanted to utilise our empty states and error messages to drive customers to downloadable titles. I proposed we created an 'Available to download' page that is merchandised to that specific use case. I then drove customers to that page through messaging in banners and empty page states.

Results

Here's what our customers had to say about the release!