Design Strategy • Leadership • Stakeholder Management • Conversational Design • Artificial Intelligence • UX Design • UI Design
Until 2023, MGM Resorts offered an SMS-based chat experience for their guests. A new initiative was launched to develop a digital concierge powered by AI, enhancing the SMS functionality while introducing a range of innovative features to deliver a more enriched guest experience.
Project Details
2 month | Team of 2 | Principal Designer (Myself) and Lead Design
My Role
- Leading design strategy and execution
- Defining MVP scope and future enhancements
- Stakeholder management for product & engineering organizations
- Strategy for involving research, content, design system and other additional streams
- Managing design team output & design QA
- Hands on contribution for design concepts and delivery
MLP (Minimal Loveable Product) Use Cases
Partnering with product team, I identified use cases for initial launch. The aim was to create a product that would substitute SMS capabilities and be powerful enough to divert calls to support center. This had to be accomplished with a polished and an elegant experience for the guests.
MLP Use Cases
Following is a collection of use cases for the initial launch.
Prototype
Following is a prototype of the experience. Get started by clicking the "Need assistance" module on the home screen.
PS: Use the back navigation arrow to once you finish an experience via prompts. Going back to home resets the prototype state.
Future Use Cases
Along with MLP use cases, the team imagined a collection of use cases that would follow the initial launch. These were more targeted towards understanding the user needs and making relevant recommendations.
01 Dining Recommendations
The idea is to collect user preferences and provide a recommendation with availability. The preferences can be adjusted to refine the search further and can be extended to shows, entertainment, pools etc.
02 Live agent
As the products grows, for the requests we don’t recognize, or a VIP approach for certain guests, we built the ability to connect to a live agent. Users were given control of if/when to connect, preventing unnecessary connecting to a live agent, if a user is having fun and testing the boundaries. A wait time estimate gives an indication to the user. An avatar and name change was used to visually reinforce that transition from AI to human.
Research & Strategic Considerations
To support with the design, research helped us understand some key insights. For example, the comparative analysis helped us see that surfacing most popular, yet specific prompts instead of replicating a phone-tree path was the better approach for GenAI.
Implementation Approach
The whole project was fairly complex from a technical standpoint. We had to scale back to accommodate engineering progress and figure out a design that would evolve over a period of time. Below is an example of the approach:
Final thoughts
This was a challenging project from the viewpoint that the technology was evolving simultaneously with the designs. There was a need for over communicating between teams to be in lock step and course correct swiftly as needed. By the end of initial launch, the design team had established a commendable trust through regular communications across teams.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my team and MGM Resorts for the opportunity to work on such an exciting project! And, thank YOU for scrolling till the end.
