Going Native

A CASE STUDY

My roles

• Director of Mobile Experience Design, Marriott International

• Engagement lead

• Designer

Up until the redesign, Marriott had published its mobile products on the constrained and idiosyncratic Kony platform. Marriott's future business success depended on launching truly native iOS and Android apps.

Marriott's digital products were defined by the organization's legacy systems. Business rules were generally inflexible and occasionally inscrutable. Crafting a successful mobile app design required optimizing platform value while navigating the many practical limitations of room search, booking and Marriott Rewards systems.

Solution: Create a human-centered design strategy for the redesign

I designed the experience around content strategy, specifically the primary concept that the more we knew about the user, the more we could do to help them. That led to the design of four user states:

1. Not signed in

2. Signed in with no upcoming reservations

3. Signed in with an upcoming reservation

4. Signed in during a stay

Mapping how to leverage user goals to expand how we support them.

I also introduced four pervasive design tactics:

1. Design for fat fingers

2. Use platform conventions unless they hinder the experience

3. Help the user imagine wonderful hotel stays with strong imagery

4. Align with marriott.com design system standards, especially for branding

Outcome

The design strategy was a radical departure for Marriott mobile products and our development vendor resisted my approach and design tactics, but by constant stakeholder and design management, I was able to steer the solution through the organization. (The redesign launched a full year after I left Marriott, but the key aspects of the design survived through to implementation.)

Navigating Dinosaurs

A CASE STUDY

My roles

• Associate Creative Director, Sapient

• User experience design lead

• User research lead

One of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world, the AMNH houses 45 permanent exhibition halls and averages five million visits annually. Unfortunately, because it’s made up of 27 interconnected buildings constructed over the last 130 years, it can also be a really hard place to find a bathroom.

The museum asked for help imagining their digital future.

Solution: Research museum customer needs and produce the musuem’s first digital product requirements

We did the discovery work for a handheld navigation device that visitors would rent from the museum. (At that time early in the 21st century, very few museums in the world had successfully implemented digital wayfinding solutions.) We focused our attention on the museum's famous fourth floor, home of the dinosaur exhibits.

• I converted the museum's needs into user-oriented requirements.

• I led intense visitor and staff research to help further flesh out our understanding of the challenge.

• I introduced three modes that would support most visitor experiences and based the design of a Flash prototype around the modal approach. I also incorporated the museum's favorite potential elements, digital tours and treasure hunts.

• I assessed the handheld devices available at the time and plotted their value along a spectrum that had simple interaction at one end and sophisticated interaction at the other, arguing that only a sophisticated approach would be successful.

My analysis of the 2008 digital device market.

Outcome

We provided the materials the museum needed to created an RFP for a handheld rental device, but as that process played itself out, the personal mobile device market exploded. The foundational work I did is now nestled deeply inside the AMNH Explorer iOS app.

Herding Public Media Cats

A CASE STUDY

My roles

• Director of User Experience, PBS

• Designer

• Facilitator

• User research lead

As it is in many organizations, the home page at PBS was a political hotcake. But in the peculiar public media environment of the United States, the greatest impediments to progress were cultural and the PBS.org Web site design remained unchanged for years as a result.

Funding funneled through the local stations rather than corporate headquarters and so every station expected to be part of any significant discussion of digital strategy or tactics. The only thing the local stations could agree on, however, was their dissatisfaction with national headquarters.

Culturally, PBS focused on what Web pages looked like much more than on what those pages needed to accomplish so, historically, redesign efforts devolved into endless arguments about color choices and imagery.

Solution: Hit the road to bring station leadership into the design process.

Rather than presenting a polished design, I created a number of conceptual prototypes that intentionally took on PBS' sacred cows. My tactics included:

• Replacing brand-based local station representation with mechanisms focused on functionality

• Prominently displaying commercial advertising and e-commerce avails

• Committing chunks of the page to the transparency to PBS finances

• Radically expanding feedback and contact opportunities

In direct opposition to tradition, I promoted less content and did it with more space, forcing arguments about home page real estate rather than allowing compromise to dominate.

I took these prototypes on the road visiting small, medium and large stations to gather reactions. I opened the design process up to dozens in the PBS community, but steered the conversations away from aesthetics and over to user goals and station business needs.

See the evolution of the PBS.org prototypes.