Macbook with room navigator screen
Hotel Room Programming
Luxury Hotel Programming reimagined
Product Overview
myRoomXC is Lutron's new cloud-based software designed for Hotel Technology Integrator's (HTI). With older technology, myRoom, programming hotel rooms in luxury spaces was a time consuming and onerous process. The goal of this project was to simplify the HTI commissioning process. As a result, myRoomXC embodies a simplified interface with key information provided at a high level and utilizes distinct spaces for key user tasks.
My Role
Senior UX / UI Designer
Timeline
Fall 2022 - Fall 2024
Problem Statement

The myRoom software previously kept all rooms and templates in one database, creating a huge file that led to slow loading times and frequent crashes.

There were steep learning curves, and a reliance on workarounds for basic tasks. Additionally, HTI’s expressed a dissatisfaction with overly complicated offline workflows. By designing a cloud-based micro front end that separated the rooms and templates, this reduced loading time during the commissioning process and simplified integral steps in the HTI’s workflow.

The Goal

Simplify and speed up an outdated experience

The myRoom software was painfully slow and prone to crashing.
There were steep learning curves, and a reliance on workarounds for basic tasks. Additionally, HTI’s expressed a dissatisfaction with overly complicated offline workflows.By designing a cloud-based micro front end that separated the rooms and templates, this reduced loading time during the commissioning process and simplified integral steps in the HTI’s workflow.

Old version of myroom software
Old version of myRoom software. All templates and navigation was organized in the right column

"It gets messy when all skeletons [templates] are viewable in the designs and realize you have made changes to the wrong skeleton, not the template you wanted to make changes to"

- HTI

Solution

myRoom is being moved to a new platform with extended cloud-based capabilities. This transition required the team to re-design part of the software. We used this opportunity to design myRoomXC, a faster and more intuitive tool for HTIs.  

This allowed me to design an experience that separates templates and rooms to streamline the commissioning process, reduce wait times as well as cognitive overload.

Research
Redesign Process
Before putting pixel to grid, so to speak, we needed to understand the user journey, core jobs to be done (JTBD) as well as key pain points. These exercises helped inform the user flows, screen layouts and which features we wanted to test with users first. 

Jobs to be done

After interviewing our Users, we identified some key Jobs to be Done. This helped to better understand what parts of the process are most impactful to the user and where the current software falls short.

Building and reviewing the model room
Quickly create multiple room templates without software lags
Transferring Programming
Ability to transfer template programming to more than one room at a time
Programming the rooms
Faster and simpler room creation and modification
screenshot of jobs to be done
Journey Map
We created a journey map for the commissioning process, we were able to identify what key points were most painful for the users and where myRoomXC could help improve the experience.

Based on our findings, we identified three stages where myRoomXC could improve the user experience - Room Programming, Transferring Programming and Repeating Process for all Rooms.
HTI journey map with key points highlighted

Identifying trends

Based on our Jobs to be Done and Journey Map, it was clear that a lot of the tasks were quite repetitive, and the same process needed to be done for each room in a hotel. Additionally, we realized that there were two separate parts of the commissioning process within the software - creating templates for room types and creating rooms for those templates.

Separation of tasks

Based on the distinct workflows and the laggy nature of myRoom, we split each room and template into it's own database. Previously, all rooms and templates were in the same database and switching between rooms, floors and templates was all done in the side panel.
By creating a dedicated page for rooms and one for templates, this helps to reduce load times and cognitive overload for the user.

room navigator page

Rooms

The updated rooms page separates each room into it's own database, allowing the user to focus on one room at a time and separate the tasks of creating a template and commissioning a room

Templates page

Templates

The templates page separates each template into it’s own database and allows user to ‘favorite’ templates and sort by name or date.

User Testing: Round 1
User Test
Based on our preliminary research, we designed a user test consisting of interviews, prototypes and an A / B test. While designing our user test, we kept the following in mind:

User Goals

  • Work offline
  • Multi User
  • Reduce time waiting
  • Bulk actions

Business Goals

  • Reduce time waiting
  • Improve User’s ability to work independently
  • Improve cloud capabilities

Features

  • Template creation and assignment
  • Multi-room creation
  • Room organization
  • Room health status
  • Multi-room transfer
User test notes

Focus areas:

  • Understanding the current and ideal user workflows (without software limitations)
  • Validating our hypothesis of user needs
  • Get feedback on current designs and workflows
  • Get feedback on different design options

User tasks and workflows covered:

  • Home page
  • Template creation, modification and deletion
  • Area Tree creation and modification

Other topics covered:

  • Multi-building spaces
  • Area tree hierarchies
  • Working in teams
  • Network availability
Early concept of Templates and Room Navigator page
Early concept of Templates and Room Navigator page
User testing results
Based on our user tests, we gained a better understanding of what is most important to our users.
Features and flows aligned with user requirements:
  • Template creation and modification
  • Bulk room creation and modification
  • Room setup using spreadsheets
  • Setting up the area tree
Features and flows not aligned with user requirements:
  • Using spreadsheets for anything other than initial upload
  • Bulk edits (room reordering, edits and deletion)
  • Area tree edits
User feedback
"I would like to be able to see all templates in one screen."
"If I know I have some rooms which would be needing another template which I haven't gotten to creating, it would be helpful to be able to mark that as undefined."
"Might be helpful to see how many devices need to be activated after changing room template."
"I like having the green GUI within the room, the software often switches the template so it get's confusing which template you're editing in"
- HTI 2
- HTI 1
- HTI 5
- HTI 7
Next Steps
Reworking Designs
Based on the results of our first round of User Testing, we gained clarity on what features to prioritize, and what an ideal workflow for the User's may look like. With this knowledge, we chose to completely separate the template and room workflows, having a tab for each.  Additionally, we learned that many of our User’s create secondary templates based off the “Control Room” template, so we designed a flow that allows them to quickly duplicate a template. Certain bulk actions like creating rooms and transferring programming to multiple rooms at once would save the user a lot of time during the commissioning phase, so we also prioritized these features and began designing flows to achieve this.