CASE STUDY
Filling the gap in online hospitality training
Originally operating in hospitality finance, Typsy identified a lack of quality online video training available to hospitality workers and were looking to pivot their entire business. They had an abundance of early ideas, but needed our help to test the water before diving in.
tl;dr
In 2016 we engaged with Typsy to explore problems around the lack of quality online training for the hospitality industry. The project was broken into two phases:
Phase 1 - Discovery, concept design and validation
I collaborated with a fellow designer to conduct discovery and design a limited product concept which drove engagement with potential customers and delivered a degree of early validation.
Validation interviews derived two key insights:
‘Bite-size’ mobile delivery was integral for on-the-go training of hospitality workers.
Hospitality venue managers want to oversee and direct their staff training at scale. This would be critical to the growth of our product.
Phase 2 - Design evolution and scaling
I lead the evolution and scaling the earlier concept for each user type across website, sign-up and in-app experiences.
I used site mapping, journey mapping and a combination of low/high fidelity UI to iterate solutions, presenting them to stakeholders and developers regularly to ensure alignment and mitigate technical challenges.
We went from design to deployment of V1 in approximately 6 months. The product has since become a great success with large hospitality groups who use it to manage the training of thousands of employees.
PHASE 1
Discovery, concept design and validation
Role:
Collaboration with colleagues to scope and drive project.
Methods:
Client discovery workshop
Analysis of video training products
User segmentation
Low to med-fidelity UI concepts
Workshops and analysis
Working with Leigh Grey-Smith (who was contracting with Alliance to guide company UX strategy and practices) - we conducted workshops with Jonathan and his team at Typsy to pull apart the problem, to understand their vision for the new business and to see what we could learn from other online training resources.
What we learned was that hospitality venue managers were suffering from skill-gaps in their staffing. Typsy believed that there was a viable market within the hospitality industry for a product/service that could deliver targeted, accessible and engaging training content to staff. Online training leaders like Udemy, Skillshare and Lynda were not targeting hospitality in a way that would effect Typsy’s entry to the marketplace.
User Segmentation
Hospitality Staff - Tim
Tim wants to improve his skills in order to advance within the industry.
The challenge for Tim is that there is limited quality online video training available to them. Training is spread across multiple providers, poorly organised, non-specific to their needs and doesn’t generate documentation of skills learned.
We can best support Tim by:
Providing access to quality training that is curated to help them to upskill in areas or greatest benefit.
Make training easy to digest on-the-go
Provide a record of training that they can take with them to future employers.
Small Business Hospitality Manager - James
James needs to ensure that his staff possess sufficient skill to effectively run the venue and drive customer satisfaction.
The challenge for James is that there are limited sources of quality hospitality training.
James has limited understanding of staff skill levels or skill gaps across the many areas of hospitality and no ability to direct staff toward specific training.
We can best support James by:
Providing access to quality, curated training.
Allowing him to add his staff to a training platform.
Helping him to identify skill gaps and direct staff toward relevent training.
Providing visibility of staff engagement, progress and accumulated training.
Enterprise Hospitality Manager - Susan
Susan is similar to a Small Business Manager, but has a larger scope of venues and staff to oversee.
The challenge for Susan is that she has a limited view of skill levels and training engagement across her venues.
In addition to the support listed for Small Business Managers, we can best support Sue by:
Providing visibility of skill levels and training engagement across and within her venues.
Direct training efforts across and within her venues.
User interface concepts
Over 3 weeks we worked on concepts, presented them to stakeholders and then iterated based on feedback. The output was a series of UI visuals across desktop and mobile formats (see below), which were presented to and validated with potential customers.
Insights as outcomes
The outcome of this phase was that we were able to validate the concept with prospective customers and gather the following key insights:
1. ‘On-the-go’ mobile learning is crucial
Hospitality workers are busy and more likely to do bite-size learning on-the-go. This meant that mobile delivery of training would be crucial to the success of the product.
2. Management value oversight of training
Hospitality groups and venues want oversight and the ability to direct training of their staff. They would be willing to subscribe a large number or staff to the service, allowing the product to scale quickly.
PHASE 2
Design evolution and scaling
Role:
Lead designer in the evolution and scaling of product design across all users.
Methods:
Site mapping
User journey mapping
Low to high-fidelity UI design
Client presentations
After Phase 1 provided us with concept validation, Phase 2 needed to provide a more complete design of the product, including sign up and in-app experiences for each user type. Now with a deeper understanding I was able to ensure that the work under development met all the business goals and user needs.
Regular iteration of low-high fidelity UI solutions leveraged off journey and site mapping, creating true depth and breadth with every new version. I ran regular client presentations to ensure that my understanding of this work continued to align with Typsy’s expectations and that technical challenges were mitigated early.
Demonstrating agility and design prowess, I also responded to Typsy’s corporate re-brand during this project by reimagining and applying new design standards to several artefacts.
Site Mapping
I created a site map to establish and test our understanding of the size and shape of the product and to identify how we think a user could best navigate it. It also allowed us to identify high use and high value areas and prioritise our design efforts accordingly.
This provided a high level point of alignment between stakeholders, designers and developers before drilling down into the UI design.
User Journey mapping
Because flow is just as important as the UI, I find that quickly roughing out user journeys and task flows is an important early step in the design process.
It results in a better understanding of the context and sequence of events that need to occur. It is also much faster than hammering out a series of UI screens only to find that they don’t gel together.
Similar to the site map, this also ensures that I’m identifying all necessary pieces of UI that will need to be designed.
PROBLEM FOCUS
How do we motivate busy hopitality staff to take training?
Of course Hospitality Managers could hassle their staff into take training, but that simply exhausts the manager and generates resentment from the staff. The fact is, effective motivation cannot rely purely on the ‘stick’ approach. We needed to introduce a ‘carrot’.
We workshopped directions for this and agreed that we needed to achieve the following:
Make it easy to access training ‘on-the-go’
Because staff are constantly on the move, it was critical that the course material was readily and easily accessible on mobile.
I worked with our developers to ensure that my designs would scale between large and small viewports.
Make training ‘bite-size’
Feedback suggested that staff would be likely to do quick training during breaks or when the venue had a quiet patch.
My designs accomodated the ability to duck in and out of training with short video lessons, followed by simple multiple choice quizes.
Reflect progress
Because the training is delivered in small chunks it was important to show staff how these accumulated toward something meaningful.
I used a combination of icons, progress bars, support text to identify progress and encourage further training.
Reward effort with social recognition
Progress is reflected in the form of Skill Credits and Certificates. I designed a profile screen where the staff can view and share a detailed summary of their accomplishments with friends or prospective employers.
“Changing our whole business was risky. To be honest, I don’t know if we could have done it without Alliance.”
— Jonathan Plowright Founder & CEO, Typsy
Outcomes
We went from design to deployment in approximately 6 months.
Among the customers who rapidly adopted Typsy was the hospitality group Solotel, which is one of Australia’s largest corporate hopitality groups with over 1,700 staff. In fact, Solotel’s outstanding experience with Typsy is now featured on Typsy’s own website.
This rapid success put Typsy in the position to invest in their own in-house design team.
Hindsight
I am very proud of the work I lead and delivered to get Typsy to the point where they could take over the design internally.
I’d love to have had the opportunity to follow up on our design efforts to see how they performed in the market. Being able to track the successes and failures and see where we could continue to optimise the product is the best way to truly test after-market performance.