hotelkit Moments

Background

First ever user experience project at hotelkit

During my time at hotelkit, I championed integrating user research into our product design process. The team and management endorsed this, leading to my guidance in a project experimenting with and sharing insights on systematic user research integration. This case study delves into the journey and outcomes of this pilot project.

Team composition and my role

The team consisted me as UX Designer, Product Owner, Product Team Lead, and Front-End Developer. I planned and executed the UX and UI Design processes as the only designer in team, however, during the discussion of the insights, prioritization, ideation, and iteration phases I collaborated closely with the Product Owner and the Front-End Developer.

Research

Following the Heuristic Evaluation to understand better the needs of the redesign project, I planned and ran Contextual User Studies with 6 colleagues from different departments (as Moments feature was accessible for hotelkit employees for over a year). My product owner assisted me during the organization and execution of the sessions.

Combining the interviews together with live screen-based tasks during the studies we were able to reveal insights into efficiency, usability, and desirability of hotelkit Moments. This helped us to pinpoint major problems faced by the users and thus, improve the user experience.

Insights

After analyzing the user studies, main problems the users face during the post creation flow together with their needs are identified for the redesign project.

Results

New post creation flow

Creating a new Moments post is through + button and in a separate creation screen is consistent with the rest of the app (other entry creation flows).

This also eliminates the confusion of creating a new post on the feed and allowed us to add network selection in the flow.

New media buttons

Old buttons to add media elements were found confusing and inconsistent by the users. The studies showed that they don't need a differentiation between the type of the media, instead they differentiate it by the shooting time (from previous media or real-time shooting).

As a result, we placed adding media buttons with an easy thumb-reach, eliminated the text, and changed icons to more modern and consistent visuals.

Editing media attachments

In old version of post creation, it was difficult for the users to arrange or delete media items after selecting them as they were presented with their names instead of thumbnails.

In the new post creation page, the media attachments are visible with small thumbnails making it easy for the users to delete, edit, arrange the items they have already uploaded.

Exiting creation without posting

Previously, there was no option for the users cancel and exit the creation flow if they decide that they don't want to post. That's why they were closing and reopining the application just to make sure they don't post mistakenly.

Through adding a back button and explanation in the pop-up, we provided enough information and security to the users regarding deletion of the drafted post.

Reflection

As mentioned above, this project was the first-ever UX process at hotelkit that includes user research. Recruiting colleagues as users allowed us to keep the budget low and show the impact of user research to the management.

In order to grasp as wide perceptions as possible, we recruited both novice and pro users. Even though it gave us a wider range of insights, it might be interesting to separate the project into two projects and focus on different user profiles to have deeper insights.