Phygital Design and Development
Over the course of my career, some of the most interesting projects I have undertaken have been around the intersection of physical and digital design experiences. Below you will find some of the self-service products that I have helped bring to market or test. Each of these presented interesting design challenges, and creative thinking in terms of connectivity and integration with legacy infrastructure.
* I am displaying only products that have made it past the design stage and were physically manufactured.
Solar Powered Airport Shuttle Display
Not all Marriott guests are loyalty members and have the Marriott Mobile App with access to the shuttle tracking features. While doing user research, we identified a significant amount of time was spent by these customers waiting at the shuttle pickup locations. Guest intercepts showed that these guests were worried that if they left the location, they would miss the next shuttle.
Curious and challenged by this, we began investigating opportunities to deliver contextual, relevant, location based data to customers to help them make informed. decisions, Several options were explored, from simple signage that showed standard schedules, and up to and including a prototype of a solar powered real-time Airport Shuttle tracker display.
In this project I was responsible for building the initial business case, funding request, product development, vendor selection, and creating a MVP display that could be used for in-market testing. Given the business case was very exploratory in nature, I needed to be highly creative on budgeting and I was able to leverage summer interns throughout the process and deliver a prototype for user testing. Results on this are not currently share-able.
Key Printing and Self Service Kiosks
While developing Mobile Key (the ability to use a mobile phone to open up a hotel room), I brought the project team to a local hotel to immerse them in hotel operations. During this offsite, we observed guests interact with the mobile check-in digital signage at the front desk. This observation ultimately led to the concept of a self-service key printer. The initial prototype transferred keycard data directly from the mobile device to a physical keycard upon presenting the phone to a kiosk in the hotel lobby, allowing the hotel to take advantage of a touchless arrival experience without the investment in an entire lock system upgrade.
After multiple design iterations and pilots, the digital key printer program has evolved into a full self service check-in kiosk strategy.
In this project, I helped develop the initial vision for the key printing concept and have a patent in this technology. I was the operational SME, and accountable for the deployment and testing of the multiple key printer prototypes. I was also responsible for identifying and selecting a manufacturing partner that was able to design, fabricate and support the initial prototypes.
Mobile Dining – Self Service Kiosk
I joined this project after a multi-market technology POC was tested. My role was to develop a scalable deployment model and identify opportunities to simplify and drive down implementation costs, and expand the audience from a single brand to multiple.
Through collaboration with internal IT partners and 3rd party vendors, we were able to deliver an implementation plan that included kiosk development, procurement, shipping, installation and training. Additional information on this are not currently share-able.
Mobile Transportation Board
While implementing the shuttle tracker program, I began exploring additional distribution channels for displaying shuttle location details. Hotel lobbies presented unique opportunities to provide this information in a relevant location.
Utilizing a third party vendor, we quickly developed a reader board that was able to consume our shuttle tracking information and display this information to the guests via a lobby display and standalone kiosk. During this testing, we were challenged on how to measure usage, and ultimately discern value without relying on just observation and user intercepts. We leveraged the built in cameras and cameralytical data to help capture anonymous usage statistics, demographic information, and even sentiment.
In this project I was responsible for building the initial business case and funding request. I was product manager and owner for the initial POC. After MVP was validated in market, I assigned and mentored a junior product manager to build out the commercial release. For the commercial release, I was responsible for selecting a vendor that could build and scale the transportation board, and negotiated pricing for the base product, installation services and support.