Guest Services - Bahía Beach Resort

#ServiceDesign

#UIDesign

#HTMLCSS

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Bahía Beach is a luxury resort & golf club located in Puerto Rico, offering tropical luxury living by providing all basic services (transportation, maintenance, etc), but also offering a variety of leisure activities, sports facilities, events such as excursions, and exquisite dining experiences.

The goal of our project was to digitalize the request and management of all these services in order to improve the experience and efficiency of the administrators and ultimately their customers' experience.

First, we built a set of responsive web applications supporting both residents and administrators. For building this complex system we used our no-code platform, Innoveo Skye®. Shortly after going live with the web application, we were asked to design a native mobile app for the residents based on the web app.

MY ROLE & TASKS

During this project, I was responsible for delivering high-fidelity designs and implementing them by customizing the default front end of Skye®.

I got assigned to the project only after the discovery phase and as both the web applications and the mobile app were expected to be launched in quite a short time frame, there was no time left for extensive user research. However, in the discovery phase, business analysts could gather some qualitative data through interviews which I could analyze and incorporate into my design.

UNDERSTANDING THE USERS

In this project, we had two major user groups; the residents, who live in the resort, and the administrators who are responsible for the management of the services available in the resort.

The challenge in understanding these users was that I could only work with data from the discovery workshops done by business analysts and that data was mainly containing requirements by the business.

I decided to go through the data from the workshops and filter out anything which is related to our users and could help us empathize with them during the design.

I created diagrams for both user types representing their mental models, behaviors, and pain points when interacting with the services of the resort in the "old" way.

This activity helped me and the business analyst team to identify problems for which our project can provide solutions.

Some of the key problems we discovered:

Majority of the communication happens via phone

It is time-consuming and not effective for administrators: their work got interrupted by frequent phonecalls, and some information got lost

Often inconvenient for residents, as they are more involved in carrying out a service
(for eg. discussing available time for housekeeping or tee time)

Distributing the work among administrators can be cumbersome

Usually happens by calling or texting each other, so it is hard to keep track

There is no clear overview on who does what

ANALYSING & DEFINING SERVICE FLOWS

Right at the beginning of the project, it became clear that by introducing digital solutions we are changing how services are provided.

For this, it was very important to get a clear picture of the business rules and see how this project will change the activities and processes.

After gathering information from the business analysts, I created service blueprints of the existing and the digitalized way of carrying out services. These artifacts were built in an iterative way and they served as effective tools for planning and communicating the transition among our teams and to the client.

Service blueprint for the old maintenance service. Click here to see it along with the new service.

DEVELOPMENT WITH A LOW-CODE PLATFORM

After the discovery and grooming, we started our development sprints. For developing the web applications we used our low-code platform, Innoveo Skye®.

The tool has a basic, clean UI which enabled business analysts to deliver the requirements fast and show working implemented results to the client at the end of each sprint.

The challenge was that the business analysts had to start implementing solutions before the final designs were ready. However, it also gave us the opportunity to test the flows in an actual application in smaller chunks. To support the implementation, I created flow diagrams and wireframes. After business analysts implemented a piece of functionality I ran usability testing sessions.

FINAL DESIGN & UI CUSTOMIZATION

While the BA team was working on the functionalities, I was creating the high-fidelity mockups and implemented them after approval from the client.

Bahía Beach Resort has clear brand guidelines which I incorporated in the Guest Services portal. First I designed the basics: basic elements, eg. links, buttons, and some layouts like forms and the home page. This enabled me to give instructions on how to do the UI-related configuration and I could also start working on customizing these elements using SASS and HTML.

Check out some of the high-fidelity design solutions below. ↓

Shared overview of requests

Administrators can see all the relevant information about the requests and can assign requests to team members. They can see all the relevant information such as the status when the request was created, and updates.

Improving communication on requests

Residents can comment on their ongoing requests and attach any relevant documents to the request or the comment which reduces the time spent with calls for administrators and it is also more convenient for residents.

Guest Services mobile app

Residents can handle all their bookings and requests in the Guest Services mobile application and/or online on the Guest Services website. They get notifications of updates on requests and bookings and they can also communicate by commenting on the requests.