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Royal Caribbean Hackathon
5-Day Design Sprint/Hackathon in association with Royal Caribbean & BrainStation
Role
UX Designer, Researcher, Writer
Platform
Desktop
Duration
5 Days
Project Overview
Royal Caribbean has partnered with Make-A-Wish, a nonprofit organization, with their Wishes at Sea campaign in an effort to help deserving children realize their wishes.
Context
Team of 4 UX Design Students
Competed against 2 other BrainStation teams
At the time of the project, there were no CTAs for donations on the Royal Caribbean main pages, and the Wishes at Sea campaign web page could only be found via search.
Hackathon Goal
Find a solution to drive positive change through donations to the Wishes at Sea Campaign. By day 5, I, alongside my team, would present our solution to a panel of 4 UX experts from Royal Caribbean and be evaluated.
Problem
Despite a genuine interest in helping children and supporting impactful causes, potential donors feel frustrated by a lack of transparency and are often hesitant to trust companies when it comes to making charitable contributions.
"
How might we bring clarity and awareness to hesitant donor's in a non-invasive way so that people feel secure in their decision to donate?
Solution
Focus on the booking flow experience
Breadcrumb storytelling banners in a way that is non invasive to the consumer
Place the CTA to learn more about Wishes at Sea in the confirmation page
Give stories and transparency over the impact the consumer donation will have
User Insight
To help arrive at this solution I conducted interviews with past and present Cruise Line patrons. With permission of my interviewees I used Otter A.I to record and transcribe the interview.
Using Otter A.I allowed me to be completely focused and engaged with the user and not be distracted by note-taking. Reviewing the transcripts later also helped me uncover potential barriers to engagement, including:
Donor Trust
Clarity on donation impact
meaningful incentives for contributions on the current Royal Caribbean web page.
Mark
“The stories that really drive me to make a contribution are the ones that are, well, obviously, you know, heart wrenching”
Ashley
“Credibility because there are a lot of organizations that don’t give to charity”
Jose
“Donating should come from the heart”
Design Process
Inspiration
Given some form of redesigning had to happen my team and I looked at how Royal and Make A Wish had done partnerships in the past and aimed to align with how they had done so in the past.
Brainstorming + Strategy
The sketches and overall brainstorming process of the design sprint helped us converge on having a focus on the booking process. I strategized that placing a link for the Wishes at Sea page would be the best setting for a CTA for donations. After all, the user has completed their goal of booking a trip, and this placement would not detract from the booking flow.
This in turn led to vital key points:
Finding balance between business needs and consumer needs and not detract from booking flow
Spread donation awareness without being invasive
Place Make a Wish in a partnerships tab and avoid any conflict with other partnerships Royal Caribbean has
Content Design
Confirmation Page Copy
Given I had strategized placing the Wishes at Sea Donation link on the confirmation page, I also took it upon myself to write the copy.
I wanted to make sure that copy would be empathetic, but also appropriately placed, making sure that it would be placed once the user completes the booking process.
Presentation
Here, my team and I presented our solution to 4 UX experts, who would judge and decide whether our solution would win the design sprint.
See the full slides here
Key Takeaways
Placing 2nd, we received valuable feedback from the guest judges from Royal Caribbean.
Sticky tab placement was too bold
Reminder that it is important to find balance between consumer and business needs