The Student Hotel
DIGITAL BRAND DEFINITION ・ WEBSITE ・ BOOKING ENGINE ・ APP
I led an ambitious creative design team throughout the crafting of a digital experience blueprint to the delivery of a new website, custom booking engine, iOS and Android app. We crafted an unique digital design language that now can be adapted to any device, enabling a consistent look-and-feel no matter the brand touchpoint.
My role
Creative Director
Lead UI Design
A SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH
A brand pioneering a modern hybrid in hospitality, from luxury, long-stay student accommodation with short stay facilities for the social globetrotter. This includes co-working spaces, events, bars and restaurants as well as its core accommodation offer needed a single source of truth of what the digital experience in the hotel and online was going to look like.
We crafted the ‘Experience Playbook’. A blueprint physical book which was the starting point for the The Student Hotel’s digital transformative programme for the next few years.
A NEW DIGITAL DESIGN LANGUAGE
The Student Hotel’s design language was already contemporary and playful but little thought had gone into how it lived successfully online. We visited the hotels to get under the skin of the brand and to see how it lived digitally ‘on the ground’.
Followed by brand workshops with the Student Hotel’s CBOs and CMOs as well as time spent with the day to day teams to get a better understanding of where the brand was successful online today and where improvements were needed.
We developed two digital design concepts which allowed us to have honest and frank conversations as to the best way forward. Purposely pulling the concepts apart to get a better understanding of what’s not changing and where the opportunities were.
We explored the usage on black verses white, typography, photography direction, page flow and brand devices verses decorative elements such as patterns and icons.
Finally we created a final design direction followed by a Design language system including Design principles and a UI toolkit to accelerate the process of detailed design and ensure a common look-and-feel across all channels and touchpoints.
CRAFTING A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE
An experience with dynamic contextual navigation, built in mobile-first principles, that supports accessibility in all its forms. Underpinning the experience is an innovative hybrid hospitality UX that is user-centric and goal-orientated, rather than one-size-fits-all.
I managed an agile team up to 7 x UI designers and 3 x UX designers and we crafted the new website, bespoke booking engine and iOS and Android app simultaneously to ensure the experience and interaction for the user between the channels was seamless.
We also created 3 x icon suites and custom animations to bring the design language to life.
STORYTELLING VS. SELL
With as complex an offering as The Student Hotel it was essential we created flexible templates and components on the website to build up rich story telling while balancing the need to sell the brand’s products.
For these parts of the website we supported The Student Hotel’s content team throughout migration of content and creation of new content.
MORE TO COME
To date, the website has gone live and later this year the custom booking engine, iOS and Android app, in-hotel way finding and on-property touch-points such as hotel door opening is due to go live.
Results
1st
Transactional website built with Episerver DXP & React
21%
Faster page downloads
71%
Increase in Google Search impressions
99.9%
Availability, ensuring maximum income