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Maturing a UX function 

citizenM, a global hotel brand, wants to deliver the best digital experience in the hotel industry. 

 

As the first full-time Head of UX, I was asked to lead the Product department in creating a digital guest experience that matches the quality and ambiance of the hotels.

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Recognizing the need for a sustainable approach, I focused on growing and developing the UX team and citizenM’s UX maturity.

 

In my first nine months, the team and I launched several key initiatives that laid a solid foundation for ongoing growth and innovation, positioning us to continually enhance the digital guest experience. 

 

Using an industry benchmark, we assessed our company's UX at level 3. Within a year, we are well on our way towards level 5. 

SECTOR - Global hotel group, privately owned

SETTING - UX team in Product department in mid-size organization

MY ROLE - Head of UX. Leadership position responsible for UX maturity and team development

LEAD TIME - 9 months; ongoing

COMPLEXITY - High

Benchmarking and goal setting

My initial step was to develop a UX strategy and roadmap, with clear goals and objectives.

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To track progress, we set the following performance indicators:

  • Customer Effort Score (CES)

  • Conversion Rate

  • User Feedback (interviews and micro-feedback surveys)

  • Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)

  • Stakeholder Involvement in UX Activities

  • Data-Driven Decision Making

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After 9 months, the most impactful changes arose from a few key initiatives:

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  • Team Building: a multidisciplinary team with external experts to bring fresh perspectives and increase the over quality of design and deliverables

  • Design System: acceleration of the design system to ensure consistency and efficiency across projects

  • Insights Pipeline and Feedback loops: a robust insights pipeline to continuously gather and analyze user data

  • UX Advocacy and Role-Modeling Customer Centricity: bring a culture of user-centricity throughout the organization by advocating for UX best practices and leading by example

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Activities

UX strategy & roadmap

  • Research and Discovery

  • Define Goals and Objectives

  • Develop User Personas

  • Prioritize Initiatives

  • Create a UX Roadmap

  • Establish Metrics and KPIs

Team building 

  • Assembling a multidisciplinary team to foster collaboration and innovation and increase the quality of design and deliverables

  • Focus on skill development and onboarding external experts to bring fresh perspectives

Design system development

  • Increasing efforts to build a unified design system for consistency and efficiency across projects

  • Establishing a governance model to ensure QA and collaboration

Building an insights pipeline

  • Implementing a robust insights pipeline to continuously gather and analyze user data​

  • Integrating Data-Driven Practices to enhance the double Diamond model's discovery phase to ensure the development of effective, user-centered solutions

  • Developing UX metrics and key performance indicators to measure UX success

  • Review and analyze one year of micro-feedback to inform improvements

  • Establishing an internal Insights Repository to distribute UX guidelines and toolkits, aligning teams on user-centered design

UX advocacy & customer-centricity role-modeling 

  • Insights and Knowledge sharing to share customer insights and knowledge across the organization

  • Customer-centric workshops to focus on customer-centric design and involve other teams

  • Encourage feedback loops to create channels for continuous feedback on UX practices

  • Hosting UX showcases to present and demo successful UX projects, boosting collaboration

  • UX metrics tracking to share UX performance data and highlight its business impact.​

Key projects and UX growth

During the year, we advanced key projects simultaneously, with team members taking ownership of individual projects while I oversaw their progress.

 

This also involved close collaboration with other teams and departments, which, in turn, enhanced the company's UX maturity.

UX STRATEGY AND 2024 ROADMAP

FOR ALIGNMENT AND COMMUNICATION OF PLANS

TEAM BUILDING AND DEVELOPMENT

SOFT SKILL BUILDING, EXPERTISE DEVELOPMENT AND ONBOARDING EXTERNALS

DESIGN SYSTEM

ACCELERATING ITS DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTING A GOVERNANCE MODEL

INSIGHTS PIPELINE AND CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOOP

ENABLING CUSTOMER-CENTRIC DATA DRIVEN DECISIONS 

CONTINUOUS RESEARCH & DISCOVERY - WORKSHOPS, GUEST INTERVIEWS, TRIANGULATING DATA

UX ARTEFACTS CREATION - PERSONAS