A CONNECTED CITY AT SEA

Enterprise scale service design pivot - Fjord / Accenture

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FULFILLING DREAMS
In 2016, the visionaries of the Disney X-Band experience partnered with Carnival Corporation to create a new class of personalized hospitality. OCEAN is a new digital platform for the fleet, delivering guest dream vacations through coordinated location aware services powered by a sensor network, host and guest wearable and integrated back-end services.

The empty warehouse that would grow to house a ship simulator and over 300 team members

The empty warehouse that would grow to house a ship simulator and over 300 team members. Thank you for tolerating no-to-low lighting Mike Gadow, Michael Parks, Esin Karasabun and all of team Belafonte.

ROLE:

  • Head of Studio for Fjord SF

  • Lead design architect for account, approach and team engagement

  • Scaling of team from 0-to-35 at peak

  • Responsible for delivery of functioning MLP services (arrival, shopping, dining, excursions)

OCEAN was Accenture’s most ambitious project, re-design the cruise experience from the ground up

Product prototype was the 3,700 passenger Regal Princess with 1,000 newly digitally empowered crew members. A new IoT enabled digital platform driving connected app, portal and wearable surface applications and services. Many on my team were new to product delivery beyond concept. All were new to a program and vision of this scale, magnitude and pace.

One of a dozen research expeditions aboard Princess to shadow crew

One of a dozen research expeditions aboard Princess to shadow crew

FOSTER RELATIONSHIPS, EMPOWER THE CREW
Crew members had never relied on digital applications and relied on paper and training to carry out their roles. What could location and profile aware data do to help them elevate the guest experience? To answer this, we embarked on a deep understanding of the crew roles.

Output above field research, capturing the needs and the principles that would guide feature definition

Access to crew is limited, you cannot simply book a couple hours to test an early flow or prototype, robust user shrines were created as a tool to keep the design and product team grounded in what crew members needed and what their work environment was like.

- Thank you Peter Burnham!

WIP Service Blueprint mapping the delivery of a guests, personalized, perfect margarita

WIP Service Blueprint mapping the dining delivery service and the tools and touch-points for bartender, runner, waiter and guest. Color coding (red, yellow, green) indicates API readiness and potential issues to resolve in the functioning prototype

EXAMPLE SERVICE CHALLENGE

Deliver a guests the perfect margarita at the right time and place. 

  1. The recommendations engine informed the waiter of the perfect, preferred guest order on approach

  2. Once confirmed, the bar with the right ingredients and closest proximity received the order with personal instruction

  3. The closest runner was cued at the right time with way-finding instruction

  4. The transaction hit the right folio

  5. Inventory adjusted, personalization engine updated, and crew optimized for the next task

Every process and step was designed from the ground up, experience and technology in parallel. We delivered a living service blueprint, mapping UI, system calls, data requirements and crew roles, leveraging a preliminary design system.  We led cross-functional and SME workshops to tune the system as a whole, trouble-shooting in conversation and code until it worked. 

Custom UI validation tool created to analyze and validate designs to fast-track MVP consideration

Custom UI validation tool created to analyze and validate designs to fast-track MVP consideration

SHIFT FROM REVIEW TO DEMO

To expedite learning and pressure test functionality, I partnered with a data design specialty team at Accenture to connect our prototype builds to ship data and system API’s to run weekly demos. We stood up an early “Alpha design system” to test full functionality. Final UI was intended to be white label for customization by cruise line brand.

Samples from our early crew facing tools, server, bar cue, runner, guest profile, wayfinding shown in proof of concept design system

PROXIMITY WAVE in use by crew member boarding passengers

PROXIMITY WAVE in use by crew member boarding passengers

In the course of eighteen months, our team moved the following targeted products from white space to design, specification and initial build:

OCEAN Ready - streamlining the process from arrival at port to on-board and on vacation
Shop OCEAN - point of sale transactions including location delivery services and excursions
OCEAN Concierge - personalized itinerary, recommendations and guest service
Dine OCEAN - On-ship dining and reservations

We also pushed forward the following essential applications and services that were not part of the initial roadmap but leveraged the capabilities brought forward by the systems integration:

Proximity Wave - Crew/Guest detection and location tracking
Dynamic Profile - Crew/Guest accessible preferences and needs
Pass-Care - Crew facilitation of customer service across multiple levels and roles of service agents
 

RESULTS

  • OCEAN Platform was announce by the CEO in the keynote at CES

  • OCEAN Ready boarding reduced passenger embarcation from 15 minutes of lines to frictionless :30 seconds

  • Shop OCEAN enabled previously unavailable delivery of food and drinks anywhere on ship 

  • Proximity Wave is in use ship-wide reducing first name treatment and recognition from two to three days to first greeting.

Personally, this experience elevated my partnership building with tech, engineering and gave new appreciation for re-inventing process

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