{"id":1218,"date":"2020-01-05T04:01:17","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T04:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/humancargo.com\/?p=383"},"modified":"2024-03-17T20:53:21","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T20:53:21","slug":"the-user-experience-of-hotels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/the-user-experience-of-hotels\/","title":{"rendered":"The User Experience of Hotels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"premise\">The principles of user experience are now quite widely known, yet still lacking in some of the most obvious places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Any customer service-oriented business is also in the user experience business. Bars, restaurants and other hospitality-based enterprises should be especially aware of this. Organizations who engage with customers over extended periods of time \u2013 airlines, for example \u2013 have even more reason to develop and deploy rock-solid user experiences. But, almost universally, they do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why not is a mystery. The basic principles of user experience are very simple: understand who your customers are; know what they want to do (or what you want them to do); and design pathways to make those things easy. A simple plan, but in the real world, somewhere between theory and execution, it all goes off the rails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hotels make for excellent case studies in this area. Whenever I travel and visit a hotel, I assess the user experience, because I can\u2019t help it. Somewhat pessimistically, I don\u2019t expect the UX to measure up, and I am usually right. The question is, by how much will it fall short?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Common Missteps<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the UX flaws I commonly encounter in hotels:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Ambient light leaks.<\/strong> Hotel designers know by now that blackout curtains are a must for guests arriving at odd times. But when a room is very dark, the LED on the thermostat is as bright as a small sun. Often found colluding with other, similar offenders, like flashing smoke detector lights, red TV standby LEDs or overly-aggressive alarm clock digits.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Bathroom placement. <\/strong>As part of the relentless drive toward optimization, hotel architects \u2013 who clearly never sleep in the buildings they design \u2013 sometimes put the toilet an arms-length or two from the pillow, with naught but a flimsy sliding partition between them. Especially delightful when you share a bed with someone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Soundproofing. <\/strong>Is it fun being woken at 3am by drunk people falling out of the elevator? It is not. <em>Bonus:<\/em> early morning garbage collection.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Elevators. <\/strong>If you want to exit to the street, should you press G, L, M or 1? Must the doors really close on a 10-second delay? Do you know what a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Placebo_button\">placebo button<\/a> is? <em>Bonus<\/em> \u2013 these:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/kennedy.studio\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/hc_elevator-buttons-2.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-399\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, you know what they mean. But under the pressure of someone rushing for the closing doors, will you press the right one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Fingerprints.<\/strong> Crime scene data on the bathroom fixtures is not the personal touch I had in mind.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Wifi that costs.<\/strong> I can&#8217;t even. <em>Bonus: <\/em>have to register first.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Room service detritus.<\/strong> People leave half-eaten food on dirty plates outside their doors, where it languishes overnight or until housekeeping else notices it. Prevalent in even the most upscale hotels. I have no idea what the solution is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who gets it right?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>All of the time: <\/strong>No one.<br><strong>Most of the time:<\/strong> Four Seasons, Anantara, Le Germain.<br><strong>Some of the time: <\/strong>Marriott, boutiques.<br><strong>None of the time:<\/strong> Everyone else. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The principles of user experience are now quite widely known, yet still lacking in some of the most obvious places. Any customer service-oriented business is also in the user experience business. Bars, restaurants and other hospitality-based enterprises should be especially aware of this. Organizations who engage with customers over extended periods of time \u2013 airlines, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/protoncandy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}