UX Lead for the redesign of a reservation platform, product roadmap, and design team tool kit
The goal of our project was to help an international, members-only boat club and the largest marine franchisor in the U.S. to redesign and reimagine their member reservation portal.
Highlights
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Extensive user research and franchise site visits
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Conducted remote, collaborative user research synthesis
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Collaborated with remote design team via Figma on highly iterative product design
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Delivered a UX product roadmap using the Kano model for feature prioritization
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Handed off a UX Tool Kit to the client’s new and growing design team
My Role
As the project lead on this project, my role required that I facilitate workshops with the client. I managed our project plan and provided feedback to the team all while delivering on the larger, more strategic deliverables.
I collaborated with the team on design, and I also managed our relationship with the client by sending status reports and checking in with 1:1 with our project sponsor.
What was the problem?
The reservation system for this members-only boat club was one of the primary touchpoints for member users. The system however was outdated, unresponsive, and hard to use — especially since most users access the portal outdoors on their mobile device.
How did we solve it?
Workshop facilitation
To kick off this project, I facilitated a few activities with our primary project sponsors and other subject matter experts including Empathy Mapping and Design Principles.
Screenshots from the remote kickoff workshop that I led.
Design Principles
Following the kickoff workshop, my team and I synthesized what we heard in order to create the following principles. While I facilitated the workshop, I delegated the actual creation of the design principles to another designer on the team. We worked with our project sponsor to iterate on the principles. These design principles were later used in our product roadmap as a way to score specific features.
Stakeholder Interviews
We conducted stakeholder interviews with each team including the executive sponsors, sales executives, dev partners, and more.
UX Evaluation & Heuristic Scorecards
My team conducted a thorough UX evaluation of the existing reservation system using a set of heuristic scorecards. Again, this is a deliverable that I delegated and oversaw but did not directly contribute to.
These are just a few pages from our UX evaluation
Contextual User Research
We visited a popular franchise location in Michigan to conduct contextual user research
We conducted user interviews with a few different audiences including current members, prospective members, dock staff, and franchise owners. In total, we spoke with 7 current members, 4 prospective members, 2 club owners, 2 dock managers, and 4 dock staff. We also completed a site visit with a franchise location in St. Joseph Michigan. There we met with the entire franchise staff to learn about pain points with the existing system. We also toured the actual dock and dock staff office to see how actual members check in to their reservation currently.
These are just a few pages from our comprehensive research findings
Remote, collaborative research synthesis
With hundreds of pages of findings, I involved everyone on the team in the research synthesis. We used an online collaborative whiteboard called Miro in order to synthesize the findings together, and we were able to identify themes and insights as a team even though we were completely remote.
These are screenshots from our remote, collaborative user research synthesis
User Personas
We generated personas in a similar fashion. I planned a few synthesis sessions with the team to comb through research notes specifically related to persona attributes. We identified a number of primary, secondary, and affected personas related to the member reservation platform. These personas were critical in developing a product roadmap.
These are just a few pages from our user personas
Product Roadmap
One of the most important deliverables on this project was the UX Product Roadmap. Throughout user and stakeholder interviews, we’d been collecting ideas for features that could delight users or mitigate existing pain points.
We combined this list with the product team’s existing feature backlog to create one comprehensive product roadmap. From there, we assigned a value to each feature based on the number of design principles each feature would satisfy. We also tied each feature to specific persona attributes to be used by the marketing and analytics teams.
Finally, we prioritized each feature according to the Kano model. In this model, you identify whether a feature is something users expect, whether it’s something users desire, or whether it’s merely a delighter. Each release of products from there on out should contain a combination of the three, with more emphasis on expected features than delighters. This roadmap was crucial in turning our extensive research into actionable designs.
Wireframes
Given the project timeline and scope, we actually started designing and iterating on wireframes on a parallel path to research. We started with a few low-fidelity wires and quickly moved onto high fidelity comps.
These are just some of the wireframes that I designed at the outset of our design phase
High-fidelity comps
Our team visual designer established a style guide and scalable pattern library that the rest of the team used for design moving forward. Using Figma, the entire team was able to design in a highly collaborative, iterative environment.
These are just a few hi-fi screen designs that my team and I collaborated on in Figma.
UX Tool Kit
Lastly, part of our scope was to help coach our client’s growing UX design team. Throughout our process, we documented all of our deliverables, how we create them, and how they can be used. This was handed off to the new UX designers to help them understand the work we did and to help coach a new and growing design organization.
These are just some of the entries in our UX Tool Kit that I created specifically for this client.
What was the result?
As a result of our work, our client had a comprehensive UX product roadmap which would inform business and product decisions moving forward. We worked with the marketing and analytics teams to help them understand how it was created, and how their existing data could be used to further validate some of our assumptions. As we ended our engagement, we were also able to meet the client’s new internal design team, and answer questions about our work through the UX Tool Kit.
What would I do differently?
If I could do this project over, I might push for a different approach to our parallel path. I think we could have delivered more value on our screen designs if we had the space to conduct research and use the product roadmap to better inform product design. Other than that, I feel we delivered incredible value to our client, and they left us with overwhelmingly positive reviews and opportunities for future work.