Wynn Resorts – In-room controls

Wynn Resorts, in-room controls
Experience Design

Wynn hotels are renowned for their upscale hospitality, dining, shopping and gaming experiences. We were commissioned to design an in-room digital experience that gives guests full control of their hotel stay, controlling in-room technologies, such as lighting and television, and directly accessing hotel amenities and services. The business ambition of the inclusion of the tablet application was to connect guests to a wider range of resort services and ultimately increase guest's spend.

The application will be placed on tablets across thousands of suites at their Las Vegas resorts as well as a newly opened Boston location.

Year
2018

Studio
Method

My role
Project lead

As part of the digital transformation of Wynn’s in-room experience, we uncovered the wider impact of the in-room tablet to the guest journey and to resort operations. We conducted extensive research interviews and user validation sessions with resort staff and guests to gain a deeper understanding of the needs and pain points of each audience.

It was also vital to understand the operational impact of implementing this new, digital control which connected to so many separate parts of the business.

Involving stakeholders from all the departments affected by this new technology – from restaurants to housekeeping, entertainment to IT was key to the success of the project.

We created a Service Blueprint for the resort, mapping all guest touch-points and their dependent services. This allowed us to highlight new opportunities including better aligned, more efficient operations and new applications of customer data, ultimately leading to an overall improved guest experience.

We used the insights gathered during user validation alongside the service blueprint to create a comprehensive design system for digital in-room interactions, ensuring the implementation of accessible interfaces for all age groups and guest abilities, while staying true to the unique Wynn look and feel.

Wynn_ipad_screen_restaurantdetail_jardin

Process

The project ran over 3 months and involved a number of trips to the Wynn resort in Las Vegas for immersion and user testing. As project lead I devised a lean approach which allowed us to move quickly from user insights to a functional prototype. The prototype was invaluable for user testing sessions, which shaped our interaction model and design direction. The prototype was also an excellent sales tool, efficiently bringing to life the project vision for key stakeholders across the organisation and ensuring their buy-in and support for the project.

We conducted stakeholder interviews and user research at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas.

Understanding the unique organisational structure and complexity of operating a 5,000 room hotel with 3,700 staff was vital before designing a new touchpoint to connect with the many services within room and the wider resort.

We ran collaborative workshops with key stakeholders from the Wynn organisation to prioritise features for the in-room tablet app.

We created user stories addressing some of the key needs of resort guests. We were conscious that the tablet would sit amongst many other touchpoints in the hotel room as well as users' own personal devices.

We created a number of interaction models to test with users. Since guests typically only stay for 2-3 days there could be no learning curve. The interface needed to be incredible intuitive and simple.

We developed a high fidelity prototype of the tablet app using Sketch + Principle. This allowed a rapid design process, moving from screen designs to an interactive iPad prototype in a matter of days.

We conducted user validation and testing sessions with both hotel guests and stakeholders at the Wynn resort.

Testing with hotel guests was particularly important since Wynn's core demographic skews older (50-60yrs). This highlighted issues with both accessibility as well as technical literacy.