IHG Team Mobile Concept

Project Overview

For a class project, I was chosen with two other individuals to work on a mock application for IHG that allow business travelers to book exclusively through their hotel brands. As designers, we created a new program that gives business guests the option to cooperatively plan, book and travel - making it easier for teams to stay together. We created a workflow of creating collective user testing, gathering content, and organizing app structure. Our goal was to have IHG become the premier hotel chain for business traveler users who want to stay together and communicate more efficiently.

Brainstorm

Competitive Analysis

Before the research process, I started off by doing some competitive analysis on websites and mobile apps that are dedicated to business guests organizing travel plans such as TripIt, Hotel Tonight, and Concur. After collecting and comparing data from products, I was able to make informed decisions about future product strategizing. 

Main takeaways from each app include:  

TripIt: Allows you review past and present reservations

Hotel Tonight: Well-designed and connecting social media

Concur: Organization and ability to see expenses

(Images: TripIt, Hotel Tonight, Concur)

User Research

Business Goal

We want business guests to not only book their stay and itineraries while giving corporate teams the opportunity to keep updated with each other plans all through the IHG Team app. 

User Goal

Business travelers are now able to cooperatively plan, book, and travel together as a team.

User Interviews

Six people, ages 25-35, were interviewed and asked to open up about their business travel experiences. I asked the interviewees to describe every step of the booking process from when they initially find out about the trip to their actual experiences on the trip. I wanted to know how the interviewees connected with other teammates and express their major pain points.

Affinity Diagram

Once all the data was gathered from User Interviews, an Affinity Diagram (shown in the image below) was created to help identify connections in data, create hierarchies, and help focus on factors that will support the most successful design possibilities from a user’s perspective.

User Personas

Next step, we have to ask ourselves; “Who do we design the product for?” and “Can we identify the characteristics of this group of people?” which allows the product to meet the needs of its users. These user personas were developed by user stories and real-life expectations. Using these personas, it kept our design process focused on who we are designing this product for.

Primary Persona - Daniel Harper is a 35-year-old man who is a financial analyst for a bank. He’s a very social and outgoing guy. He gets along really well with his coworkers - they’re sort of a tight-knit group and when he travels it’s normally three to eight of them. As far as business trips, his biggest pain point is lack of communication. He’d love to stay at the same hotel as his coworkers and keep updated with their plans.

Secondary Persona - Claire Edwards is 25 years old and is an office admin with 4 years experience. She has to deal with more experienced office administrators who use dated systems when arranging travel plans are unwavering when it comes to new methods. Her biggest pain points are groups can be very disorganized and employees going over budget when booking trips.

User Scenario

Our primary user, Daniel Harper, just received news that he and few other co-workers will be representing the Banner Bank at a business conference meeting next week in Chicago, Illinois. Daniel needs to book his hotel reservations soon. He wants to know if his co-workers already picked their hotels. Daniel is hoping to be in the same hotel as them. He wants to find out his co-workers' plans and plan accordingly but there is a lack of communication because of all of the recent workload.  Daniel finally receives an email from his work's business administer, Claire Edwards, to open the IHG team app where he is not granted permission to book his hotel. He has used the mobile application before in the past for previous business trips. Daniel signs in with his LinkedIn account and proceeds to make his decision. The booking process is quick because Daniel is granted access to the company's credit care that is already given.

With Claire being the administer, she is able to set the hotel options and grant certain users the permission to use the company credit card to make bookings. She limits the hotel options to fit within the company's budget. Claire is able to see Daniel and the other co-workers' hotel decisions. Claire loves the new IHG Team App because she feels more comfortable when she has full control. 

User Task

Daniel needs to log into the IHG Team app with his already connected LinkedIn account. Daniel wants to book and stay at the hotel where his other two co-workers have already chosen from.

User Goals Tied to Persona and Business Objective

Daniel is able to book his hotel through the new IHG Team mobile application. Because of IHG Team, Daniel and his team are able to stay together leaving everyone with greater satisfaction.
 

After we got an idea what users need, we wanted to create a user flow (image above) that shows our persona going through the app. Creating this user flow helped with a visualization of the user path the user would take to complete their task.

Ideation Sketching

I started sketching to generate solution ideas for our user journey. Our team admired how the Trello app setup felt when it came down to organizing team boards and itineraries so when designing we used the Trello app as priliminary inspiration. Once I was done with my sketches, I added this ideation into our user flow (images below).

We connected with multiple groups of users to review and dissect the app and ensure updates. Users were given a certain task and and asked questions through A/B testing. I was able to reevaluate my user flow along with craft a better design that met Daniel and Claire’s needs. 

Main takeaways:

• Visual hierarchy is confusing on certain pages

• Visual design feels cluttered in some areas

• Sort and list buttons seemed confusing

• User task flow seemed easy

Outcome & Moving Forward

High-Fidelity Mockups

I conducted another usability test with the updates that we were given from the previous tests. The results were much better this time around. Feedback was much more positive.

nick.hughes414@gmail.com