Project Overview

For this university research project, my team and I received an “email” listing out various business goals from executives at Marriott. We evaluated the list and identified three business initiatives that we would be able to address through UX Research. We were tasked with creating a research plan and recruited 8 participants to interview for this generative research report. As a team, we analyzed the interview results and created an Affinity Map to narrow down key themes and insights. The remaining duration of the project was conducted individually, so I generated a list of business recommendations and presented my findings to the stakeholders.

My Role

UX Researcher & Slide Deck Design

• UX Strategy

• User Interviews

• Affinity Mapping

• Storytelling

Project Goals

• Evaluate the list of business goals and choose 3 to address with user research.

• Write a research plan

• Recruit 8 participants to interview

• Present findings to stakeholders

Stakeholder Alignment

While User Experience is a hot topic nowadays, not all business objectives can be addressed through user research. One of the purposes of this project was to evaluate a list of stakeholder goals and identify which ones we could tackle with the chosen qualitative research method, observations and interviews.

After reviewing the list of business goals shown below, my team and I selected three that we would aim to achieve through our research.

Project Goals

After we responded to the stakeholders (Link to our email response), letting them know which business goals we could address through UX research methods, we received a follow up email. They asked for us to focus on these three business objectives for this study:

1. Why (and why don’t) people sign up for the loyalty program?

2. What do business travelers look for, want and need when evaluating hotel properties and choosing a room to book? Why?

3. What do leisure travelers look for, want and need when evaluating hotel properties and choosing a room to book? Why?

Research Plan

Once the project goals were solidified, we went to work on organizing our research plan. I worked on the introduction, the themes and research questions and moderator’s guide.

My strategy for writing research questions:

• I expanded on the research goals and general questions to formulate more specific questions that would be addressed during interviews.

• I utilized a jobs-to-be-done approach to understand what “jobs” the user needs to accomplish and how Marriott can help them achieve their goals.

My strategy for creating a moderator’s guide:

• Divide each section by research theme and the questions that relate to each theme.

• Questions are clear and concise.

• Allocate time for follow-up questions or additional questions that arise naturally.

• Make the participant feel welcome and comfortable by using a conversational tone and remaining neutral throughout the interview.

Research Session Compilation

After each team member conducted their two user interviews, we shared our notes with each other in a spreadsheet as a means to document our findings in one place. This proved to be a useful method for remote collaboration before we started affinity mapping.

Affinity Map

We used Figma to create an affinity map of our interview results and identify key themes and insights. The themes that we discovered would provide the basis for the proposed business recommendations.

Research Themes Discovered:

1. Loyalty program enrollment is driven by discounted rates, room upgrades, and discounts at local restaurants & entertainment.

2. Business travelers are motivated by hotel cleanliness, proximity to work location, business center and onsite amenities.

3. Leisure travelers are motivated by age of the hotel, location, cleanliness, hospitable staff and onsite restaurant/bar, gym and pool.

Final Report

During the final phase of the project, we worked individually to create our own list of recommendations to be presented to the stakeholders. I produced a set of recommendations for each business goal and delivered a presentation outlining the overall findings as well. The presentation was the final deliverable for this project but I included a series of actionable next steps and how we would measure success if these recommendations were to be implemented.