Heather S. Roth

OPPORTUNITY BRIEF: each body of work began with an opportunity brief where we would invite the product manager to answer questions about the research request, how it ties back in to business objectives (OKRs and/or KPIs), and criteria for success. Once we had a handle on the problem, we could situate the body of work within or across the product development lifecycle. Sometimes we would begin a body of work with a paticipatory session where all stakeholders could contribute their understanding of the problem, currently held assumptions and beliefs, as well as other areas of interest. We would often go back and consult the opportunity brief to ensure our efforts stayed on task with the original intent for research.

WORKSHOPS: sometimes I would facilitate workshops among the research team or the product teams to review existing resources for the purposes of gaining shared understanding, quick documentation, and rapid ideation for a new body of work. In this example, I gathered the research team to bring together several studies conducted across our various product pods about attribute-based shopping experiences. This is a screenshot of the agenda from the readout post-workshop.

MENTAL MODELS: this mental model diagram is another artifact from the workshop I facilitated on Attribute-Based Shopping practices. I often will visualize mental models to serve as a design thinking tool when we want to understand the user's perspective in decision-making. Here, the mental model could be summed up in three simple steps. We often consulted this diagram when building new prototypes and testing them.

STUDY DESIGN EXAMPLE: here is an example of a study I designed as part of a larger body of work around showing paid upgrade options to elite members in the Digital Check-In flow in the Hilton Honors app. Highlighted here are the learning objectives for this particular study for which I drafted a testing guide utilizing InVision prototypes. The test was programmed into usertesting.com where we were able to capture 7 recordings of user feedback for some new concepts we were testing.

FINDINGS EXAMPLE: after an evaluative test such as the concept testing around paid upgrade options, I often put together a quick slide deck that showcased overall findings, findings by screen, highlight reel with clips from testing sessions, user quotes, and design implications as a result of the research. Here is an example of the overall findings from the concept testing study.

MOBILE APP: the majority of my work at Hilton centered on conducting research on the Hilton Honors mobile app. Here as an example of a screen I used as part of a guest intercept study in a hotel lobby where we showed printed pages of screens and had participants "tap" the page to tell us what they would do next. We also asked several probe and follow-up questions in studies such as these to gain further insights that would direct our design efforts.

IDEATION SESSIONS: whether in person using sticky notes and sharpies or connecting virtually using Mural, I often facilitated ideation sessions to gather ideas and then group them into meaningful categories with the team to progress our understanding and direct research efforts. Sometimes these were at the beginning of a research project to lay out what we think we know, sometimes they were in the middle of a project to review research findings with the team and determine next steps, or sometimes they were at the end of a project to conduct a retrospective of how things went. Other use cases for ideation sessions: capture ideas to strategically define next year's (or next quarter's) objectives and key results, tease out success criteria for a particular campaign or body of work, review wireframes with a group and identify things we like and areas for improvement, etc.

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK: one of the first things I did after joining Hilton was to embark on a day of immersion at a hotel property to understand what daily operations were like, learn from the people who interact with guests, and observe first-hand some of the challenges in hospitality. I took this photo of a cleaning cart at the Hilton Dallas Lincoln Centre. The photo clearly reveals some of the complexities of cleaning practices among housekeeping staff, but after also speaking directly with head housekeepers, we learned there are several "intangible" dimensions to housekeeping that also affect daily operations. Some of these were: scheduling, number of staff and number of rooms to cover, early check-in and late check-out guests and their impacts on housekeeping, emergency situations, the check for clean process, guest privacy and satisfaction, etc.