After Hours
Design Question
“How may we highlight the lack of guidance provided to night shift workers by the hotel industry? Can critical design help?”
The Outcome
Onboarding Experience
The Process
Focus Areas
Through our research we came across a set of challenges but for the purpose fo this project we focused on these areas:
- Dietary nutrition
- Sleep cycle
- Social life
The other objects in the space, critiqued on the smaller details of the hotel industry that affect the experiences of the night shift workers.
Research Methods Employed
A total of 12 night shift workers participated in our research across 3 hotels.
LOVE LETTER / BREAKUP LETTER
Love letter and breakup letters were written by the night shift staff addressed to their night shifts. The act of personifying an intangible i.e. the night shift, allowed them to openly express how they feel towards it, in both good and bad ways.
Insights gained:
- The extra money earned was the main incentive for most of the staff.
- The slow pace of work suited some to learn extra skills or relax, while it was not ideal for others.
- Most of them were concerned with their quality of life and health.
- The letters showcased the dual nature of their work and provided a safe place for expression.
DIRECTED STORYTELLING
Directed Storytelling allowed us to dive deeper into the topics that emerged as positives and negatives through their written letters. Allowing the conversation to flow more naturally than an interview helped them feel at ease to share about the nature of their work.
Insights Gained:
- They health concerns that the staff faced were regarding sleep hygiene, dietery habits and physical exercise.
- Most of them faced difficulty in maintaining social circles and relationships due to the reversed work schedule.
- They continued to appreciate the extra pay they receive and the extra days off available to them.
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY WALK
Planning nighttime walking expeditions through the routes that the night shift workers take and exploring the neighbouring areas of the 3 hotels, we were abe to understand London’s night life in more depth. It helped us experience first hand, what the potential challenges are and understand our participants better.
Insights gained:
- The amount of artificial light and crowd in areas defined the level of safety felt while walking through them.
- Backdoor alleys to hotels and restaurants felt characteristically different compared to their fronts.
- Limited amenities were accessible or available past the 11pm mark.
AEIOU
This exercise helped us analyse various aspects of the outdoor spaces we wanted to evaluate such as A-Activities, E-Environment, I-Interactions, O-Objects and U-Users. This method allowed us to find similarities and differences in behaviours between Leicester Square, Piccadily Circus and Soho Square gardens.
Insights Gained:
- Activities involving intoxication rose as the night went by and this resulted in unsocial behaviours.
- The increased presence of police and security personnel was evident.
- The crowd in public areas slowly reduced and became more concentrated near venues open for night time activities.
Affinity mapping
Affinity mapping helped shortlist the challenges the project would focus on after the research phase was complete. Dietary nutrition, sleep cycle and social life were the key areas of engagement that would be critiqued. This step also helped us group together and interlink key insights from our research.
Crazy 4’s
Crazy 4’s allowed us to conceptualise the patterns of information observed during the affinity mapping like how the slow pace of work during the night shift allowed some workers to learn new skills while the others felt difficulty dealing with the boredom that came with it.
Prototyping
Low- fidelity prototypes critiquing or highlighting one key aspect or concern of working a night shift. We tried to have prototypes with specific purposes to be able to be clear with our messaging.
User Testing
We then began with low-fidelity prototyping and testing our ideas to understand if our message was being conveyed clearly and if it was allowing the participants to engage in meaningful, critical conversations by interacting with these somewhat speculative objects.
Final critical objects
Our final immersive hotel experience comprised of a few main artefacts that offered points of conversation at different stages of the night shift staff onboarding experience and were supported by the hotel environment created engaging all the human senses. These were:
- Sleep serum dispensers: The serum bottles aim to solve day sleeping problems like noise, light and temperature.
- Night time menu: Has an entree, main and desert with dietary concerns highlighted in the descriptions of these dishes.
- Hotel key story cards: They are etched with anonymous snippets of intriguing stories told by night shift workers.
- Conversation lamp: This lamp is AI powered and is a social companion to help the night staff battle loneliness and boredom.
The lessons I’ve learnt from this project
- Working with a group on a design project involves understanding a variety of perspectives, adjusting with majority views, speaking up when things are not going right and taking the lead when needed.
- The assumed challenges faced by any user group and the reality is always slightly different and it always helps to research and analyse with as unbiased an opinion as possible.
- It is important to thank and give back to the people that help you along the way in a project which at the end of this project we made sure to do.
- Fixating on an ideal form of outcome or medium restricts the design process sometimes instead of streamlining it. If the project allows room for experimentation then it is always better to let the design process flow organically.
For a more detailed process, please visit the project blog here.