
How to attract hotel visitors with an interface?
I got the opportunity to work on a real-life project for Cityhub Hotel in Amsterdam together with another UX Designer and 6 developers from Codaisseur. Let me tell you more about the hotel and the project:
“Cityhub, is aimed at Generation Y travellers that are all about a digital lifestyle. They are connected 24/7 and are comfortable in a world filled with touch screen and quick service” contemporist
Hotel visitors can share their travel photos or photos of their stay on the Instagram page of hotel #cityhub. These photos are displayed on an entertainment screen in the lobby. It is meant to please the guests and at the same time, it is free advertisement and publicity for the hotel. The software of the screen is from hashslider.com and controlled by a Raspberry-PI.

Monday
Kick-off
We were invited for a briefing in their lobby. It was a little bit of chaos because at the same time a first aid course was given which made it noisy over there. We were told that the current app didn’t fully meet their expectations because it does not show the comments and likes of the posted pictures. In addition, the interface is not branded. We had to come up with a solution to make the interface more attractive for the guests within one week. Therefore we decided to start with a design sprint.

Research
After the briefing, we stayed at the hotel to get to know the hotel better. especially the use of the screen and the wish they expressed to change their interface. We started to behave like a typical city hub hotel/hostel guest to get a better understanding of their experience.

Ask the expert
We were wondering what the hotelguest was experiencing at the time of entry. In addition, we asked ourselves if they expect information from the hotel to make their stay more pleasant. We were also curious if they had seen the screen in the lobby and what they experienced. Did they understand the meaning of the screen?
The host was also crucial to us. The host could provide us with more information because they had daily contact with the hotel guests through the mobile app or face 2 faces.
First we started by questioning the host. The host told us that the hotel guest has an average age of 30 years old. They are searching for convenience and are tech-minded. The majority speaks English but the host also meet guests who can not express themselves. In addition, it appeared that not all guests are consulting the host for information. The guests who DO consult the host ask usual questions about restaurants in the area, events, transport and places to visit.

Ask the hotelguest
After our interview with the expert, we started with our preparations to interview the hotel guests. We went to a quiet place to prepare our script to obtain information about the hotel guests. We started to understand the problem after talking with the expert.
“It is a challenge to get hotel visitors engaged with the screen in the lobby”
With the help of the script, we returned to the hotel to interview the hotel guests. In total, we talked with five different people to obtain information. We used the semi-structured interview technique. First we had to get to know the guest a little bit better and trying to understand what the purpose was of their visit. We obtained useful information. After I understood why they were here, I started asking questions about, what their opinions were about the screen. If it was helpful to them. If not, what could be helpful? Clear insights emerged such as; things to do, nearby restaurants and events.

Tuesday
Map
The whole team came together to come up with a solution. In order to ensure that we were aligned with each other, it was important that we all understood the problem. As a facilitator, I started by summarizing the briefing and communicating our research. Then I explained the program of the day and week to gain a better understanding from the developers. After all, the developers were completely unknown with a design sprint. I noticed they already started with thinking of solutions. It was up to me to prevent them from starting thinking of solutions based on their own assumption, because it could restrained them in their creativity and at the same time, it is not based on the research we have done.

As a facilitator, I had the challenge to constantly involve the developers in the process. In determining the problem, I asked the group for input. From there on I asked what kind of hotel guests are visiting the hotel because, in the end, the ideas had to be tailored to the type of guest that visits the city hub. Next to that,
I had to ensure the group was thinking of how we could reach these people from the lobby without thinking in solutions.
In other words, what kind of device should we use and which location in the lobby? Should we use sound or something else? The group was free to fill this out. The group had to write it down on notes and stick it on the wall. After they have written it down, we clustered comparably noted and voted on the ideas. We chose the idea with the most votes. In this way, the direction of the sprint is determined by everyone in the group.
How might we solve the problems?
The group was aware of our probem, the goal, type of guest and how to reach these guest. With this in mind we started with the exercise “how might we”.
For developers with no design experience at all, it is difficult to really understand how to perform this excercise without thinking of solutions.
After an SHORT explanation, they understood the exercise (thank god) and began to wonder how they could solve the problems of the experts and hotel guests. The developers were asked to write down these questions on notes. They got a half hour to do it. The notes that corresponded to each other were clustered and arranged. After this, each group member went to vote for the HMW that seems to him or her the most suitable to reach the goal.

Sketch
Okay, the morning was over.
The group of developers had done incredible work. Work that is outside their comfort zone.
Fortunately, they understood the purpose of the exercises. I could take a breath of relief and start with a couple of fun exercises in the afternoon. In other words, sketching ideas. To start sketching ideas right away was not a good idea. We needed a warming up. Therefore, we started with the exercise called “Crazy 8s”. Yes, it was crazy because they had to fold a sheet of paper to create eight frames. Sketch a variation of one of there best ideas in each frame. Spend one minute per sketch. They had in total eight minutes.
It was exciting, stressful but at the same time, they got a lot of energy because they were forced to activate their creativity within a short time.

Solution sketch
The group had thirty to ninety minutes to complete this exercise. Within this time window, they had to create a three-panel storyboard by sketching it in three sticky notes on a sheet of paper. It had to be self-explanatory. Especially the anonymous part was really important. They were not allowed to discuss it, otherwise, they could influence each other. Sketching the best idea based on al insights was their mission. Ugly was okay and words matters.

Wednesday
Decide
Judgement day! The sketches hung against the wall because it had to look like an art museum. Each person received three votes. The intention was to vote on the features of the sketches that could be combined at a later stage. While voting, it was important to remain in silent or else the group could be affected by each other. After the vote,
the stakeholders came along to judge on our ideas and give a final vote. It was really exciting because we didn’t had any clue how they would react.
These final votes were decisive for the solution that we want to propose.

Must haves and nice to haves
To get an overview of the votes we separated the functionalities in must-haves and nice to haves. The must haves are crucial to reach our goal and the nice 2 haves can additional be added if there is enough time left. We have taken into account the demands of the city hub.

Meeting with the stakeholders
This was the time to have an open discussion about the must haves and nice to have in the hope it matches the demands of the stakeholders. This was partly the case but in the end, we had to consider the Instagram page as the main page. This page had be used for commercial purposes. In other words, generating free publicity with guests posts on Instagram. However, the hotel guests indicated they weren’t attracted to the screen and are missing out information about the surroundings. We made the stakeholders aware of this. They started to understand the wishes of the hotel guests, therefore we came to an agreement of the features that had to be implemented.
Wireframes
After we had agreed on the features, it was time to determine the design direction. We took advantage of the presence of the stakeholder by exchanging ideas. The stakeholder came up with the idea to work with a slider. A slider that changes from an Instagram page into an Events page and Announcement page every 30 seconds. With that in our minds, we started to work on the wireframes.




Thursday
Prototype
To prevent us from doing unnecessary work, we sent the wireframes to the stakeholders and asked for approval. We received feedback on the dashboard. It had to be simple for the host because the host had to operate the screen. All the other pages were in line with the ideas of the group and the stakeholders.
A group of developers was now able to start creating and setting up the backend and another group started with setting up the front-end. We as UX designers started with the prototypes. It was important for the process that we kept each other up to date because the developers had to be able to build what we were designing.
Friday
Feedback and Iterate

The prototype was completed. The developers were busy building the backend and frontend and we had an appointment with the stakeholders to test the prototype. We received useful feedback which we could use to improve our prototype.

The end of the week had arrived. The complete design process was completed. It was up to the developers to implement the design into a working product. From the start of the design process we captured the proces and converted it into a video to give you a better understanding of the sprint, which ultimately resulted in the final mockup.
Learnings
To be for the first time a facilitator was a useful experience. In the beginning, we had to stick to the process to prevent the group from creating solutions based on their assumption because this would affect the outcome. And even if you and the group members are sticking to the process still the idea could be surprising enough for stakeholders. This was my biggest challenge. Here is a short list of my learnings:
- It would be useful to involve the client from the beginning of the sprint to make sure that you are going in the right direction.
- It is important to treat everybody from the group equally. Everyone’s opinion and input counts.
- It is a habit of people, in general, to think about solutions which can influence the creativity and the outcome of the sprint.
- At last but not least I learned that I like to be a facilitator.
Many thanks for reading my article and if you still have questions about this experience please feel free to contact me.





