Problem

Housekeepers were receiving instructions and details about their work day via a printed handout. Major pain points in this experience were that the papers would get damaged or lost throughout the workday while housekeepers were juggling multiple items and tasks. Housekeepers were already using their mobile phones to communicate with their managers while working. I saw this as an opportunity to convert their paper experience into a mobile one.

Objectives:

1. Reduce the amount of inbound messages the Housekeeping Management receives daily

2. Improve ratings for cleanliness scores

Research

I centered research on the WanderJaunt housekeepers, with the intent of understanding all of the context involved within their workday. I shadowed multiple teams for a week, so I could experience the variety of circumstances and incidents they encountered.

Develop

Once I mapped out the housekeeper journey, I decided it would be best to have our proposed product highlight crucial information for users at specific stages in their journey.

Interface

 The WanderJaunt Housekeeper Product is an intuitive mobile interface that encompasses all of the information a person in that role would need to have a successful workday. Housekeepers can effortlessly view their schedule, find out what supplies they need for that day, access entry instructions, rate the state of cleanliness the guest left the property in, flag incidents, and log the completion of requested tasks from one single product.

Feedback from Users

After this product was shipped, I conducted shadow sessions with the housekeeping teams to see if the product was indeed making their work-lives easier. You can view all of my notes from the shadow sessions using this link. The feedback was overall positive. The new product allowed for a variety of workflows, which was great for housekeepers since they each have their own way and order in which they like to do things. Less physical interaction (ie: clicking on buttons) was built into the new product and I observed that it took seconds to use in comparison to the old application, which usually added 2-5 minutes to the user workflow.

Post-shipment feature Additions

A few pain points were observed during the shadow sessions. The engineers and I were able to quickly add features to mitigate these pain points.

Pain Point 1:

If an item was moved around during the stay, housekeepers had no reference for where to properly replace the item.

• Solution: Provide a link to listing or listing photos for housekeepers to reference.

Pain Point 2:

If a user did not log out at end of day, the updated schedule did not surface the next day.

• Solution: Implement an auto-log out at the end of the workday. We also advised users to access the product via a private browsing tab if the issue persisted.

Future Opportunities

Guests often leave behind belongings in the properties. The WanderJaunt housekeepers are responsible for reporting and bringing in these items. There is currently no feature within the new product to report this, so Housekeepers have been utilizing Slack to do so. To enable better tracking, it would be ideal to build in an lost or forgotten item feature within the new product.