This prototyping experience was slightly different than last semesters. This time, we were encouraged to create a storyboard and will have to present our prototype to peers and faculty later this week. Trying to narrow our focus and decide on a prototype was difficult. Our team has a lot of good ideas to satisfy our HMW statement. We had three main concepts:
- Marriott Exclusive Green Reward Point System
- Updating all Marriott Hotels to include innovative sustainable components
- Soap dispensers
- Signs to educate people
- Toilet paper without the roll
- Etc as will be explained in the project
- Creating an exclusive “green room”
As you can see, there are alot of opportunities for prototyping! Our team decided to incorporate all three into our story board to get feedback about where our project should go and what we should prototype.
Making the storyboard was relatively easy and straightforward. I had worked on it during the weekend and then we met one night to finish it. Unfortunately, my printer decided to print all the pictures pink! Too bad it wasn’t green to go along with the concept (: We printed out pictures of what the “green rooms” would look like and the highlighted sustainable features. Going off our reading, Low Fidelity Prototyping, putting pictures on a whiteboard is definitely a rough prototype.
The first feedback session was extremely helpful. We received positive and corrective feedback that our team met and discussed about. Some of the key takeaway points were:
- Focus on the point system
- Incorporate the sustainable components we had in the exclusive rooms into every Marriott hotel room.
- Liked the idea of having informative/reminder signs next to faucets, showers, light switches and TV.
With this feedback, we decided to prototype a website and information signs. We used Wix.com. We believe the website is a good prototyping tool because:
- It is easy for the person to see
- It is easy to adapt when we receive more feedback on Thursday and Friday
- We can easily show the point system
- We can show pictures of the room and amenities
While I was creating the website, some holes in our design became noticeable. One of our concepts it that people can put 100 points toward an organization and Marriott will donate $10 to a Marriott affiliated organization., but we had not thought of a way to make this “seen”. We were able to correct this by adding a donation element to the website.
As we were practicing our elevator pitch, Erin expressed that she was confused about how our persona might actually react to this product and concept. She wanted to envision how this reaction might go. So we decided to create a comic strip! We role played a few scenarios and were able to learn more about our persona and how we can target Business Bill. It was very helpful and may be something to think about incorporating into the Prototyping stage.