Virgin Voyages - User Testing

The Challenge

The different crew Apps were designed with an initial hypothesis of expected human behavior.
Given changes in customer expectations of digital experiences, it's essential to re-evaluate the design interactions and assumptions to optimize the product's user experience.

Solution

The team and I got aboard the “Scarlet Lady” ship to do user testing on the different platforms with the ship crew. But previous to that, we created a schedule and set a test plan.
Our goal was to get as much feedback as we could in two days to, later on, bring new insights and improve the housekeeping management, restaurant host station, support queue station, and sailor services app.

What we did

Observation and User Testing Interviews

While the team observed and interviewed the different crew members at the stations, **notes with feedback and video recordings of the crew members using the app** were taken to keep track of the challenges and findings users presented. That helped to pay attention to essential details that needed improvement.

We had the privilege of getting to test our Crew App solutions onboard The Scarlett Lady with the first crew members on a test voyage.

Some Findings

Table Management

**Crew members (Hosts) would like the following features prioritized:**
**First, see the total number of guests served** since they need to report this number to managers during the shift.
**Add new guests to a current reservation** without canceling the previous one.
Check if a guest has a **reservation in another restaurant** simultaneously.
**Send reminder notifications** to all upcoming guests, not only to the main person listed on the reservation, to avoid being late or acknowledging cancellations in advance.

What Users Said

***“Incidents reported are not in order, the times are disorganized; which are the incidents today?”***
***“This is the idea where we would like the color-coding of the cabins; if it’s red, we can’t enter; in green, the guest is out of the ship.”***
***“I try to assign the same crew members for the next voyage, but it says “bad request,” tomorrow morning, my assistant has to re-assign the crew again for the next voyage from zero.”***

Deliverable: User Feedback Summary Deck

The final deliverable was an executive summary presented to the leadership and product team and a prioritized sheet of challenges and opportunities to address in the following design optimizations.

Creating a spreadsheet helped to keep track of the insights. Organized by Intended Task, the issue or challenge the users presented when realizing each action, the level of effort for development, and the prioritization column (for the client and development team). This last one is to define the level of urgency for those changes.