Understanding the needs and behaviours of travellers onboard MSC cruises around the world, to drive continuous improvement of the digital ecosystem in their smart fleet.
Role
Part of a team of 2 Design Researchers
Tools & activities
Research plan definition, interviews, shadowing, online survey, A/B testing.
MSC for Me is a digital ecosystem that helps travellers manage their whole experience onboard of the smart fleet of cruises. It is composed of digital signages all around the ship, a mobile app, a smart TV app, and a tablet for the crew.
Our goal was to evaluate the perception that travellers across different markets had of the program and identify key consumer needs/behaviours that were not being addressed, or existing functionalities that could be improved. To achieve that, we went onboard two of their biggest smart ships, covering routes in two markets (the Caribbean and the Baltic Sea), to interview and observe both travellers and the crew in the real context.
Once we gathered valuable qualitative insights, we defined our hypotheses and sent an online survey to more than 50,000 travellers to confirm or invalidate them.
The results of these research activities not only informed the following design sprint that aimed at improving the existing ecosystem, but also served as a starting point to create a research plan that focused on MSC’s Asia-Pacific customers.
The biggest lesson? Contextual interviews are key to uncover high-quality insights. Being able to speak with people in the real environment where the activity is happening is extremely useful to understand their emotions and why they behave in a certain way.
The biggest advantage of the qualitative piece of this research was to speak with travellers when they were actually in their vacation mood and interacting with the ship’s ecosystem.