Weave Weekly Report
Week 47 | 20 Nov — 24 Nov
Objectives
We kicked off this week invigorated by the feedback we had gathered from our second round of prototype testing — our first with real users! As we close in on the end of our term, our tasks center around finalizing our guest- and staff-facing prototypes and conveying the value of our concept. To that end, we spent this week synthesizing our research and identifying the design implications, revising our prototypes to reflect our findings, and planning the communication of our final design.
Actions
We conducted our first round of testing in the hotel over the course of four 3-hour sessions on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Aided by an informational poster and the receptionists’ invitation, guests approached us to explore two mid-fidelity prototypes for a total of 5–25 minutes per guest. The first prototype (v2.1) was designed to spotlight the hotel employees and their recommendations, while the second prototype (v2.2) supported navigation by activity type over a map interface. Our task prompt was simple: “Find something you’re interested in doing.” We found that v2.1, which was text-rich and personal by the nature of its design, supported lingering perusal over an extended period to discover the island’s offerings and employees’ expert preferences. When the entry-point was a map, as in v2.2, users navigated to choices swiftly, driven by considerations of personal interest, geographic/scenic appeal, and logistics. Users found value in both experiences, suggesting a merge between both interfaces to retain both the browsing and the targeted selection qualities. Furthermore, we confirmed that users find it important to have an artifact to save and take with them: We observed our users softly repeating the names of recommendations they wanted to remember.
Moving forward, one challenge will be to finalize a taxonomy for the categories, descriptors, attributes, and constraints that determine what is shown and how users interpret the flow. These decisions will in turn inform our staff-facing prototype, which models a system for inputting and managing recommendations in a way that reduces burden and increases delight and engagement. We found that guests were crestfallen when recommendations weren’t as fleshed out as they had expected them to be, speaking to the importance of managing expectations through screen design and introducing manageable content standards for staff. Overall, we were pleased and surprised by how much staff took ownership of their content, from submitting revisions and elaborations to sharing additional photos. Photo sharing was particularly beneficial to the success of the design, as guests have continuously expressed a desire to see more photos.
Next steps
Over the next week, we will work on high-fidelity versions of our prototypes for a final round of usability testing. These are additional tasks that will occupy us:
- Determining how best to merge successful components of both guest-facing prototypes, and how to present details
- Developing a taxonomy to unify both guest- and staff-facing experiences
- Supporting new behaviors and interactions; e.g., staff collaboration including cross-pollinated comments to bolster existing recommendations with extra tips (described internally as the “yes, and” feature), a system administrator dashboard with data visualization to reveal the distribution of recommendations across categories, etc
- Executing a video shoot for our proof-of-concept
- Branding
