Royal
Caribbean
Leading a talented design team to innovate our guest and employee experiences around the world.
Allowing guests to enjoy their adventure, their way.
I joined a growing design team and was tasked with overseeing the development of various projects meant to elevate the experience of the millions of guests that sail on the largest cruise company in the world (yes, we also had the largest cruise ships in the world.) As well as focusing internally on reducing pain points and friction for the thousands of employees on every ship.
As the commerce team we took on the redesign and re-architecture of our massive cruise planner platform, where guest can book and plan activities for their cruise. Working with changing requirements and a tight deadline, we brought design thinking into our processes and iterated on what the best experience for our guest can be.
Getting brand and stakeholder buy-in was crucial, coordinating with our research team, we would present design decisions with the behaviours learned and this let us make sure what we built was not just usable but highlighted the emotion of each brand.
Designing frictionless experiences
We had the benefit of being co-located design team with a dedicated research and design system allocations. This enabled us to build a strong feedback loop where we would be able to interview guests, do ethnographic research on the ship, and really live through the thrills and frustrations that you come across when you embark on a modern cruise.
Leading our team we focused on what pain points we knew we had in our applications, and creative ways we could design a solution. While also juggling product requirements and technical limitations to provide a more delightful and refined experience for our guests. From letting a guest find a dinner reservation quickly, to celebrating a new loyalty status or being able to board with just their phone.
Thinking outside the box
Part of our responsibilities were pitching innovative ideas to the internal brands and the company, that could then get funded and become actual projects. Thinking out of the box and preparing deck after deck to showcase our ideas, let us design without bounds and push the limit of what our products can be.