OUR PROJECTS
OUR CHISLEHURST PROJECT
BROMLEY
TUI TRAVEL
SELECT A CABIN
​PROJECT OVERVIEW​
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Customers had never been able to choose a specific cabin when booking a cruise holiday through the TUI website. This had led to a high number of customer complaints, particularly for people with disabilities needing to book a cabin near to more accessible lifts and routes around the ship.
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I lead the project to design multiple design options that could be tested with real customers to determine the best way of allowing them to pick a very specific cabin. Overcoming the challenge of needing to display a large number of options displayed in a ship format.
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MY ROLE ​
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I lead from a UX perspective on this piece of work, with key responsibilities being to brief the research team on the approach I wanted to take to firstly uncover what customer's issues were with the existing booking process, and how I wanted this to be tested with real life users after I had come up with several design options.
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THE PROBLEM​
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Customers were unable to book the cabin they wanted during the cruise booking journey. This led to many customer complaints and frustrations. Key themes within the complaints were the inability to book an "accessible" cabin, no way of booking the same cabin they had booked previously (this was very important to regular cruisers) and no way of ensuring they were on the floor they wanted or near an easily accessed fire exit or staircase.
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“If I don’t get the cabin I want, then I don’t book the cruise”
“Location can have a major impact on a cruise enjoyment, particularly for those who suffer from sea sickness”
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No ability to choose a specific cabin, and the deck plan isn't clearly integrated into the journey.
Not clear to the customer why there are differences in price for the same room type.
GOALS​
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Customers wanted to feel happy and secure that they had booked the exact cabin they wanted to. The business wanted to be able to up-sell different options and charge a premium for this cabin booking service, therefore increasing their profitability.
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DESIGN PROCESS​
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I initially liaised with the customer feedback and analytics teams to really get into the detail of what customers were finding frustrating with the current booking system. There was a wealth of information as TUI had a feedback tab live on the site and they would also follow up with feedback request emails. This problem was one of the number one issues for the cruise journey and so we gathered a lot of information on what customers would like to be able to do.
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I then carried out a detailed competitor and comparator analysis to see what other cruise companies were offering, and if they provided more options to solve these customer frustrations. It turns out the majority of other cruise companies did in fact offer the ability to choose your own cabin so this further highlighted the need to develop a solution for our customers.
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As a final piece of initial research we conducted a Usabilia questionnaire posing several questions to customers about what is most important to them when booking a cruise online. A key recurring theme was the desire to book a previously used cabin, so we placed a "painted door" test on the site to determine if there was a need for this functionality.
Painted door test to gauge the desire for customers to be able to book the same cabin as they previously did.
PROTOTYPES​
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I then came up with 3 different ideas to take to customers and test their response. This involved taking into account a series of technical and business limitations around pricing and cabin types, but is something I particularly thrive on in any UX engagement I work on.
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With the support of the research team we tested x3 versions to customers using remote testing and then wittled these down to 2 key ideas that we took to customers to test in the TUI on-site testing lab. We tested a wildcard version whereby customers could view an image of a large ship and choose the position within the ship before heading to the select a cabin page, a step by step version so the customer could make their selections on a number of pages and an accordion style version so the customer could clearly see all of their complex selections within one page.
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The results of the painted door test proved highly successful so the ability to choose a previous cabin was quickly implemented, and the prototype that tested the best throughout all of the testing was also taken forward to be designed and developed. I worked closely with the UI Designer in the team to ensure the complicated ship deck could be translated onto the screen and be clear and accessible for customers to be able to select or tap a very tiny specific cabin.
Prototype 1 - Choose your location on the ship first (deemed key by customers who suffer from sea-sickness)
Prototypes 2 & 3 - Explored the use of the entire ship plan, using either a step by step booking layout or an accordion one-page layout.
PROTOTYPE EXAMPLE
RESULTS​
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Due to a long development timeline and the fact I was working on this as a 6 month contract, I wasn't there to see this project go live. However the UX Principal was quick to message me and let me know how successful this project was once it went live. Particularly with the in-store colleagues who were then able to book customers cabins on their in-store kiosk screens. The functionality can still be seen, as i designed on it, on the live site today.
