The Problem

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New generations of travelers are favoring more unique stay locations such as Airbnb's over traditional hotels, and hotel sales have begun to decline.

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Marriott and Hilton are looking to smart hotel rooms that provide a unique and personalized experience and give them an edge in this increasingly saturated market.

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Legrand is tasked with providing a smart room ecosystem and installation process.

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Users & Audience

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Our target audience for this installation process is a smartphone-wielding technician of unknown expertise and skill level. It could be anyone from the hotel's janitor to a dedicated installation professional.

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My Role

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Sole UX designer, conducting interviews with key stakeholders, determining the optimal user flow, designing the app's interface, preparing assets for developer handoff, and making myself available as a resource for the devs during the build process.

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The team for this project was around 10 to 12 people, including developers, QA engineers, project manager, technical lead, and myself.

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Scope & Constraints

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This system will be installed in currently operating hotels all across North and Central America by installers of unknown skill and expertise.

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The installation process needs to be:

1) Easy –accessible to installers of a wide range of expertise, and

2) Quick –interfering as little as possible with hotel operations.

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The Process

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Research 

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Competitive Analysis 
 

I took a look at competing systems and other hardware ecosystems that use an app for the installation process.

I came across a few good examples and kept them for design, flow and usability reference.

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Planning

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User Stories & Flow

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The user for this application will be an installer of unknown skill level, but the requirements were clear. 

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As users’ skill levels were unknown I had to design for all skill levels, so I designed a flow that would walk the user through the installation process and another flow that was much more streamlined to make the install process much quicker. 

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Exploration

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Brainstorm and Sketch 

I began brainstorming and sketching out ideas and vetting them with the other team members.

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Wireframe 
 

After solidifying the user flow I began creating wireframes 

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Prototype 

 

With the completed wireframes and following the user flow, I built a low-fidelity mockup prototype and presented this to the team as well as management and stakeholders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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And then…

 

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the entire project was outsourced.   🤦🏼‍♂️

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But that's okay, and here's why:

 

Results

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The software center at Legrand is very young, but hitting a growth spurt. As part of that growth comes learning.  Here are a few things that I learned.​

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Previously, Legrand had depended strictly on development to create their software solutions. While the company was able to successfully build software, those projects suffered from design flaws and lack of usability and received heavy amounts of negative customer feedback (read: 1.7 stars on Google Play and 2.2 on the App Store). Legrand's reach into UX and better project management was an appropriate response to these indicators, as well as their decision to outsource a project that had already started off on the wrong foot (development had already begun on this project before I ever handed any designs off to the developers).

 

I was able to see firsthand the absolute necessity for each project to begin and end with a solid UX focus.

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My experience on this project also helped me learn about working as a UX designer in an agile dev environment. Because previous projects never included UX as part of the process, work was being assigned for development from the very beginning. This gave me the super valuable experience of being an active support to the development team, be included in daily stand-ups, and otherwise gain insight into the agile development process. It was awesome!

 

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While this project was not representative of the ideal, I came away very confident about tackling my next UX project, and I consider that to be a success.

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