Hospitality SaaS
I volunteered for a startup creating a SaaS product for the hospitality industry. The goal of the product was to streamline hotel operations by crafting a single tool that could do the functions usually done by multiple software programs.
Client
Startup (can’t share their name because I signed an NDA)
Role
UX Designer
Duration
5 months
Tools
Figma
The Brief
When I joined the startup they had just completed user research, and were beginning to design initial wireframes for testing.
Each designer was given a user story to design for, mine was:
“As a hotel employee working at the front desk, I want to be able to check in/out guests (including key assignment and return).”
My Job
Apply existing user research into designs.
Develop a user flow that allows front desk employees to check in and out guests, assign and return keys.
Take user flow from lo to hi-fi, incorporating feedback from user testing.
Defining the User
To orient my design, I compiled the team’s user research into a simple user persona and identified my user’s biggest pain point.
Front Desk Operations
Running the front desk of a hotel can involve a lot of tasks, all of which need to be tracked correctly in order to keep business running smoothly. Among the most important are: checking-in/out guests, assigning and collecting room keys, and managing reservations.
Biggest pain point: hotel software being complicated and inefficient.
Initial Wireframes
Using the task flow and minimal information architecture created by the research team as a starting point for my first designs. Based on these, I decided to start by designing a dashboard where front desk operations could easily access: check-in/out process, key management, and guest profiles.
Information Architecture
Using the task flow and minimal information architecture created by the research team as a starting point for my first designs. Based on these, I decided to start by designing a dashboard where front desk operations could easily access: check-in/out process, key management, and guest profiles.
Task Flow
Dashboard design
Based on information architecture and task flow, I decided to start by designing a dashboard where front desk operations could easily access: check-in/out process, key management, and guest profiles.
Horizontal scroll of the dashboard highlights in action.
Check-in process
For check-in/out I borrowed UX patterns from e-commerce with the goal of breaking down the process into simple, digestible steps.
Check-out
The check-out process followed much of the same steps for check-in, with the added step of entering/scanning the room key number for collection.
User Testing & Feedback
Our team performed user testing, and conducted an interview with someone who worked at a hotel on the usability of our initial designs.
Overall, our designs performed realitively well with a couple key takeaways.
Key Takeaways
The check-in/out process needs to be accessed via a modal rather than the ecommerce style flow (the modal-pattern is industry standard).
Hotels usually collect room keys with just a confirmation of the guest’s name, no scanning required.
Going forward, the MVP of the product will be designed only in desktop.
Reservations need to include package additions (e.g. breakfasts)
Hi-Fidelity Wireframes
Pivoting from the feedback from user testing, I redesigned the check-in/out flows to include a modal (which could integrate into the main dashboard), and a more standard, form option for creating/editing reservations.
Check-in/out Modal
I designed the modal to display the most pertinent information a front desk employee would need to see (e.g. number of nights, if the reservation has been paid).
Make a Reservation
There was a very important element forgotten in my initial designs: hotel employees will need to refer to a reservation outside of the check-in/out process!
Note: The name and logo of the startup have been redacted due to my NDA.
Guest details being added.
Complete Reservation
I suggested adding the reservation history I’ve had experience using Salesforce, and noticed the activity logs were extremely useful to my coworkers in figuring out customer orders.
Completing a reservation in action.
Reflections
This project was in a completely different area of UX than I’d worked in before, and I loved learning more about the UX patterns of SaaS and the hospitality industry. I also gained some valuable experience working in completely remote startup environment, and I think my own time management skills grew greatly because of it.