Improving the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) Website Experience

Koh Khai Liang
Jul 30, 2017 · 6 min read

The Brief

This project was meant to be a pitch to out client (MBS) and the solution proposed should fundamentally be based on a 6 months’ time frame.

These were the objectives given by our client:

  1. To emphasise the brand as a modern and luxurious destination
  2. To provide a solution to a better integrated online service
  3. To provide visitors easy access to information on their facilities
    and services
  4. To improve the hotel booking experience

Targeted Audience identified by Client

  1. Hotel guests, who may be foreign tourists or locals.
  2. Families

The Team

Together with Ridzwan Haron and Ken Lee-Sanekata, we simulated an agency (BBNNP Digital) and took on multiple roles of UX Researchers, UX Engineer and UX Designers.

Through Heuristic analysis and usability test on the current website, we were able to identify the following issues:

  • Information overload
    Users felt that they were overwhelmed with too many CTAs (Hotel Booking & Promo) and information (Promotions & events).
  • Poor findability
    Users find it difficult to navigate through the website to find their desired information.
  • Poor legibility
    Users highlighted that the size of the text within the pages were too small and they were hard to read.

Business Goals

Based on our findings, we are able to define the following business goals:

  • Increase hotel bookings
  • Increase Sands Membership sign ups
  • Generate awareness and more reservations
    to the other attractions in MBS
  • Revitalise the brand through visual enhancements
    and better user experience

Objective Statement

Through our analysis, we were able to come up with our objective statement:

To provide a better and integrated online user experience, we will provide a user-centred, task-oriented support that delivers a great MBS experience.

User Personas

Based on our user interviews, we were able to identify three personas

Based on the desired target audience specified by the client, we chose to focus on The Family which fitted the criteria of being a family and tourists who were also hotel guests. Therefore, we plotted the journey map for the family on their hotel booking process:

Content Strategy

Content Issues

Some of the issues that we have identified and intent to rectify for better user experience:

  • Hard to understand content
    Users find it difficult in understanding the content (Membership benefits)
  • Content is not structured and hard to navigate
    Information available are not clear. Users are confused with the two membership types (Shopping and Casino). Navigation compromised due to unclear structure presented.
  • Unclear error messages
    Users get confused when an error message indicating no room available on desired dates on the search results page but was later made available when they proceed.

Content goals

The top three goals for our project are:

  • Driving conversion of visitors from being a prospect to a paying customer for the hotel
  • Identifying the benefits clearly to the users of being a member for the respective casino and shopping rewards memberships
  • Providing an integrated shopping experience that allow visitors to opt for packages that combines the different services available

Guiding principles for content creation

Proposed Workflow

Service Design

Based on our initial research, users have highlighted on their long waiting time during check in. By creating a service blueprint, we were able to identify possible opportunities for improvements.

By introducing digital check-ins and allocating self check-in kiosks at the hotel lobby, we hope that they will improve the overall hotel experience.

Project Methodology

We proposed to use the Agile methodology to reduce the level of risks as well as to keep the clients well-informed on the progress of the project. Any feedback from the client can also be taken into consideration from this process. With the stipulated 6 months timeline, we will run 6 sprints running on 2 tracks (Discovery and Development). Discovery team will handle all research and stakeholder engagement, while the other development team will be focused on producing prototypes and usability testing. Open communication is available at all time and 2 design studios will be organised during the process.

The team structure of this project will consist of the following:

  • Management
  • Advisory
  • Project Tiers

Design Studio

We believe in involving our clients from the start in creating the solutions together with us. We propose to conduct 2 design studios in which we will invite relevant stakeholders to participate in the ideation and design process.
The objectives of the design studios are:

  1. Create a shared project vision — both for the short- and long-term plan;
  2. Generate ideas in a blame-free environment; and
  3. Foster a sense of ownership of eventual solution.

The design studios are are structured in four aspects: people (getting the right people in), environment (setting a blame-free, creative environment), process (implementing a structured and facilitated discussions through design thinking) and intelligence (extracting knowledge and experience of your people).

Change Management

Change management professionals will be supporting the transformation throughout the whole process and below are some activities they will be managing:

Projected Timeline

Prototype

Our prototypes can be viewed at the following links:

  1. Web prototype
  2. Mobile prototype

Reflections

We got another chance to work together as a team again. We do have some advantages and disadvantages with this arrangement. It is good that we have more or less understood each other’s capabilities and differences but that can also lead to complacency. From the start, we have decided to take on different roles from the last project but there will always be time that we rely on the strengths of other members to get the work done. It might be the time constraint that we resorted to doing so but it does reduce the chances of learning more through actual practice. Nevertheless, we still learn from one another and I enjoyed the whole process.

Thank you Ridzwan Haron and Ken Lee-Sanekata for all the hard work that you guys have put in to accomplish this project.

Koh Khai Liang

Written by

• Aspiring Entrepreneur • Creative Professional • Photography Hobbyist • Casual Gamer

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