Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau
Case Study
Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau
Convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs) are semi-public organizations which use taxpayer funding to promote destination cities – in this case Miami. In an era of Yelp, AirBNB and Tripadvisor, CVBs are tasked with drawing visitors to a destination and, in particular, with encouraging hotel stays. It is, in trade vernacular, all about putting heads in beds.
The Greater Miami CVB wanted to switch to a responsive design controlled by new content management system. They had three different audience groups (and messaging approaches): national and international tourists; meeting planners (essentially a B2B play); and, locals who visit the site for partner promotions such as the prix fixe Miami Spice month.
Working closely with the interactive agency for this project, Fuseideas, and the client team, the recommended site build included:
- Treating Greater Miami as a series of neighborhoods, each with a distinctive vibe and subset of partner activities and hotel experiences
- Personalizing recommendations based on user viewing history and an interactive tool that lets visitors dial-in interests
- Integrating web-based tools that allow partner hotels, restaurants and other businesses to keep amenity and event offerings up-to-date on the GMCVB web site
- Tracking and measuring links to partner sites as a concrete KPI
Tasks & Deliverables
- Discovery stakeholder workshops
- Discovery user interviews
- Heuristic review of GMCVB and related sites (Landscape Analysis)
- Strategic recommendations & discovery findings
- Personas & user journeys
- Site map
- Wireframes
- Usability testing
Similar Projects & Clients
- Cayman Island Dept. of Tourism
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- Nashville Airport
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UX Timeline & Work Samples
Planned and lead UX portions of discovery workshops, interviews and focus groups with client stakeholders and end users.
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Conducted heuristic review of Greater Miami CVB site and web sites of several other CVBs. This helped to create an understanding of the digital ecosystem within which the GMCVB site existed and to tease out emerging best practices. Emphasis was placed on how tourist destination sites address different types of visitors and on a sub-set of features such as crisis communications.
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Drafted personas to illustrate how key audience segments would engage with the new Greater Miami CVB web site. User journeys rounded-out this deliverable set and cross-referenced user goals established in persona development.
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Presented findings from discovery phase to web team, GMCVB stakeholders and leadership, and eventually to representatives of Greater Miami governing bodies. Because the CVB is a semi-public organization, consensus building and process transparency were important considerations.
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Created high-level site map presented as a Discovery Findings deliverable then iterated into a fully detailed, complete site map.
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Developed user-centric wireframes founded on discovery research and recommendations.
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Briefed-in agency designer and participated in internal design review meetings to ensure feature continuity from UX through design.
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Developed usability test plan – grounded in persona research and content goals. Created clickable prototype from design files. Performed usability testing. Wrote report summarizing findings and recommendations, presented to client.
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Landscape Analysis (Heuristic Review) Sample Screens
List of CVBs reviewed in Landscape Analysis.
Heuristic criteria used for evaluation. I typically begin with criteria developed by Jakob Nielsen, then adjust as appropriate for the client and project.
Summary findings presented as a heat map (green = excellent, red = very poor). The heuristic criteria evaluated are listed along the left, sites reviewed along the top, with averaging on the bottom row.
Deep-dive screen showing evaluation of meeting planner content. Planners were one of three critical audience groups for the site, essentially a B2B play within a larger B2C site.
Competitor site highlights. This example shows evaluation of the New York City CVB site.
Discovery Workshop Photos
Site Map
High-level site map with call-out for top-line home page content blocks.
The detailed, final, site map includes wireframe template assignments and placeholders for intended future-phase content.
Usability Test Findings Report – Sample Screens
Task success summary. It should be noted that although usability testing is a qualitative tool, simple summaries of task success/fail rates can help drive recommendations and build consensus around usability issues and challenges.
Screen shot with task details for testing user engagement with interactive personalization tool.
Screen shot with task details for making hotel reservation on mobile device.
Wireframes – Sample PAges
Home page wireframes for Greater Miami CVB in desktop and mobile variations:
1. Cinemagraph / video hero space
2. Interactive neighborhoods map
3. Interactive personalization tool, which can be applied site-wide for recommendations of hotels, resturants and activities
4. Webcams
5. Spotlight features
Note: Unless the project parameters dictate otherwise, I intentionally keep wireframes rough and low-fidelity. I have found over the years that higher-fidelity wireframes tend to prematurely lock-in visuals and create unnecessary design contraints. Competent visual/UI designers are best left with broader creative freedom and high-fidelity wireframes tend to lead to unintended design decisions.
Places to Stay (hotels) in desktop and mobile variations:
1. Cinemagraph / video hero space
2. Hotel search with facets for neighborhood, amenities, price point, and application of user’s personalized preference scales
3. Editorial articles
4. Special offers from member hotels
Personas & User Journeys
The half-dozen personas developed for GMCVB represented archtypes for different audience segments and included domestic and international tourists, a business traveler, meeting planners and a local.
The Leisure Tourist persona was broken into four screens. This first screen covers Tiana and Kevin’s key characteristics, experience goals grounded in tourist segmentation research, and their device preferences.
The second screen of the Leisure Tourist persona addresses challenges and opportunities posed by the persona and identifies their mindset.
The third screen of the persona shifts to the tasks Tiana and Kevin will be performing on the GMCVB web site. These tasks take place over multiple site visits throughout their decision process and mark milestones in the engagement funnel. These tasks are later used to define progress in their user journey and inform usability testing.
The fourth screen of the Leisure Tourist persona links their site visits back to GMCVB’s business objectives.
User Journeys were developed for each of GMCVB’s Personas. These play out over several screens, representing multiple site visits, as Tiana and Kevin progress through the decision funnel to eventually become “heads-in-beds.” The Journeys cross-reference user tasks identified above to help shape an audience-centric site and inform site map development which followed.