Liza-Monette | Design + Illustration

Project Brief

Overview
INSPIRED FOR YOU is Welk Resorts' ARDA (American Resort and Development Association) Award-winning program that provides Owners and guests with fun activities and experiences at all of their resorts and locations—San Diego, CA; Palm Springs, CA; Lake Tahoe, CA; Breckenridge, CO; Branson, MO; Cabo San Lucas, MX.

The Problem
Five times a year, the INSPIRED FOR YOU program releases a printed guide/brochure for all locations and their daily activities. Each guide also contains pertinent resort information (e.g., important phone numbers, hours of operation, check-in/check-out times, room amenities). These guides have high-visibility as they are available at the Front Desk and all the on-property recreational centers. The initial guides were small and jam-packed with information that was hard to see or read. In addition, printing these guides was very costly. A user-friendly, clearer, concise, and visually cohesive solution was needed to increase user engagement and activity reservations. In addition, a solution for decreasing printing cost for the stakeholder was of high importance.

Role & Responsibilities
UX/UI Designer + Graphic Designer – Research, Interaction and Visual Design, Prototyping, and Testing; Design Strategy, Concepting, Branding, and Print Production.

Discovery/Empathize

User Interviews
Due to time constraints, there was no opportunity to conduct user interviews with the desired target audience—people that had previously stayed at a Welk resort or to go on-property—to get user feedback. Instead I interviewed company Team Members. Most who were interviewed were familiar with the INSPIRED FOR YOU program and its guide. They provided me with feedback on the guides and what they thought worked, and what didn't:

What Worked:

The different colors to differentiate between the different days
Having a map
Lots of information—descriptions, hours of operation, and phone numbers
Guides are great opportunities for ads and highlighting specific activities

What Didn't Worked:

Branding was inconsistent
Fonts were incredibly small
Overall size of the guides felt too small
The map was small and looked like an afterthought versus being informative/helpful
Maps were inconsistent among the locations
Reservations can only be made by calling or done in-person

Analysis/Understand

Solution
After coming up with a few solutions, I started writing down a few notes, then quick sketches and low-fidelity wireframes.

Simplify the layout to be user-friendly. Remove any superfluous, unnecessary details that don't add any function (example: large, vertical-oriented text such as "helpful numbers").
Increase the height of the guide. Adding extra height would allow for using larger fonts. Create physical mockups to verify that the guide was still easy to hold/carry in the hand.
Create a fold-out map that would allow for larger fonts and details. Make this design consistent among all locations.
Create a website version that would allow for reservations and paying for activities ahead of time. A website would be much more cost-effective than creating an app. A website could easily be created and maintained internally. Creating and maintaining an app would require working externally with an agency.
Having a website version could reduce printing costs by decreasing the number of printed guides that are needed.

Concept/Ideate

User Stories
From the user interviews I developed the following user stories:

As a user I want to reserve an activity on a certain day and at a certain time
As a user I want to view featured/seasonal activities
As a user I want to know how much an activity costs
As a user I want to view a map of the resort
As a user I want to view the location of an activity
As a user I want to view important information
As a user I want to view important phone numbers
As a user I want to view resort amenities
As a user I want to view hours of operation

Design/Iterate

Sketches & Low-fidelity Wireframes
After coming up with a few solutions, I started writing down a few notes, then doing some quick sketches and low-fidelity wireframes.

Project needs, sketches of a fold-out map, and sketches of a digital/web-based solution. Click image above to enlarge.

Printed Guide: High-Fidelity Design and Mockups
Once I had done a few sketches to give me a better idea of where to take the design, I moved onto creating high-fidelity mockups. I would have preferred to do more explorations with black and white low-fidelity mockups, but time constraints were a big issue. I provided a physical mockup for accurate, to-scale representation. Luckily everyone—the stakeholder, VP of Resort Operations, Creative Director, and Production Coordinator were happy with the printed guide designs.

Select pages from the San Diego INSPIRED Guide: fold-out with ads, back cover, front cover; covers for all other locations; example of a daily activities spread; season ads; remote info and channel guide; fold-out spread with seasonal ads and larger map. Click image above to enlarge.

Old (left) vs. new (right) INSPIRED printed guide comparisons: cover, inside contents, and map. Click image above to enlarge.

Website: High-Fidelity Design and Mockups
For the website, I applied the same branding I used for all the printed collateral. I took into account the pieces that were printed and used during live classes so that the program branding remained consistent whether you were taking an in-person class or a self-paced one on the app.

Examples of proposed INSPIRED FOR YOU responsive landing and location-specific pages (desktop and tablet view). Click image above to enlarge.

Selection of proposed INSPIRED FOR YOU web pages for mobile view. Click image above to enlarge.

High-fidelity mockups on a mobile device, desktop, and tablet. Click image above to enlarge.

Concluding Thoughts

Outcome
I presented mockups of the INSPIRED FOR YOU printed guide and a walk-through of a prototype of the website to the stakeholder and VP of Resort Operations, alongside the Creative Director and Production Coordinator. Everyone was quite happy with the outcome. However, we only moved forward with the printed guide. As they appreciated the website design and would have liked to move forward with it, they didn't have the budget for it at that time.

Lessons Learned and What Could Have Been
Due to time and budget, only half of the proposed solutions came to fruition. Here are few lessons learned and what I think could have been if all solutions were allowed to go through:

It would have been nice to perform user interviews and testing with actual Owners and guests, but with time constraints I did the best I could with what was available to me. In the end, everyone was happy with what was created.
Dream scenario #1: a website would be up and running! As beautiful as the printed piece is, it's a very long process—two weeks alone just for printing and shipping. Having the website could have decreased the need to print so many guides; Owners/guests/users could easily reserve and pay for activities ahead of time at their own convenience.
Dream scenario #2: printing costs would go down! Better yet, could be eliminated! There would be a great savings in moving digital. The budget allotted for printing could be allocated elsewhere (e.g., new equipment, hiring more staff).

Thank you for reviewing this case study. If you have any feedback, questions, or comments you'd like to share, you're more than welcome to!