Copy of Ace Hotel
Designing a way for Ace Hotel guests to browse and book experiences allowing them to get to know a place through the eyes of those who live locally.
2 weeks | Group project | Concept
Ace Hotel is a group of boutique hotels founded in Seattle in 1999 and headquartered in Los Angeles. The majority of it’s Hotels operate in the United States but it also has Hotels in Panama and the UK. Describing their hotels as “inspired by an affinity for the soulful and fuelled by our love of the hyperlocal.”
The brief
Ace Hotel is looking to pilot a new program that will allow guests to plan and book local experiences, making it easier for them to get to know a place through the eyes of those who live locally. I worked in a team of 3 UX designers to design the new booking system.
Defining the Problem
Sending out a screener survey helped us identify the right users for interviews and I spoke to staff and a guest while carrying out a contextual inquiry at Ace Hotel. This helped us get a better understanding of user methods and habits when it comes to planning and booking trips.
Who is currently booking those experiences?
What causes a user’s decision to book an activity or not?
Is it the same for leisure and business travellers?
What type of experiences are people currently booking?
We identified 3 important factors people consider or require when planning activities for their trip.
Inspiration - Users don’t necessarily know what or if they would like to book but are interested to see what is available.
Flexibility - Many users said they don’t book activities in fear that their trip will become too regimented.
Expertise- Users want to feel assured that the tour is lead by a guide who is knowledgeable and experienced.
Exploring Solutions
We took insights from our interviews, competitor analysis and contextual inquiry to create interactive prototypes and create testing script and scenarios for user testing. Following each round of testing we iterated, improved and eventually leading us to our final design.
Summary
Providing more feedback and reassurance in the query form, and booking process caters to user’s desire for flexibility.
Making the list of experiences relatively small but varied but communicating that they are vetted and carefully curated by Ace Hotel provides a solution for many problems under the umbrella of what we’ve termed expertise and inspiration.
Decluttering the thumbnail views on results pages (compared to competitor display styles), showing only what was deemed most important to users at this point resulted in a smoother process and matches the brand mood and aesthetic.