Discovery
Initially, Goki targeted customers were hostels. However, in order to achieve sustainable growth, we recognized the need to expand into other markets, specifically hotels. We embarked on a journey to reach a wider range of people.
Working alongside our product manager, I gathered valuable research and insight through collaboration. Additionally, I conducted weekly stakeholder interviews, aiding our understanding of our user base.
Challenges
- Personalized and branded experience, to facilitate we set our design to be a billboard for their content while ensuring accessibility and maintaining its look and feel.
- Building hotel trust and adoption, to address this we establish strong partnerships with hotels, involving them in the design process. We engage in continuous communication to address concerns and demonstrate the value and benefits of the Goki Mobile app, gaining their trust and endorsement.
Constraints
- Our solution needs to be backward compatible as we still have many customers in hostels. Therefore, I must ensure that our solutions are suitable for the existing experience and familiar to our existing user base.
- As we plan to release for iOS, Android, and web using a single code base (React Native), the design must be compatible with the limitations of each platform.
Prototyping
As the design process advanced and our product vision became clearer, I focused on creating prototypes. At this stage, I used my skills to develop a functional prototype that highlighted the product's key features and user experience. This helped us gain a better understanding of how the product would work in real-life situations and identify areas for improvement.
Interactions
We aimed to create an enjoyable experience for guests when they open the door, as it is the most frequently used action in the app. However, due to limited engineering resources, a tight deadline, and the need to support three different platforms (iOS, Android, Web), I utilized Rive to design a lock experience that guests can interact with and enjoy without requiring significant effort from the engineering side.
Developing & iterating
As we grew more confident in our final approach, we transitioned from design and prototyping to development in order to create a comprehensive product experience. During this phase, we developed a fully-functional application that underwent rigorous testing and iterating for several weeks before being shipped.
Outcome
After four months since our launch, with lots of iterations and improvements, hotels have become our main target customers, accounting for 70% of the company's revenue, compared to last year's 35%. Our hotel partners have given us positive feedback, expressing a sense of ownership towards the app and no longer feeling the need to develop their own solutions