Crafting local memories
Role
Project Manager, UX Research & Design
Timeline
3 MONTHS [2024]
Brief
The Problem
Hotels play a crucial role in travel, yet most lack distinction and fail to create lasting impressions. Despite being essential to the experience, they often blend together in memory, leaving little emotional impact on guests.
We create memories through our senses.
Scent marketing is the theory that scent can create immediate and memorable connections between brands and consumers. However, the current state of scent marketing is often subconscious. And within hotels, the scent is almost only showcased in the bathroom through bath products.
Initial Research
In order to survey the current state of hotels and hospitality, our team went out to observe 7 high-end hotels in Atlanta's Hotel District and conducted 24 interviews with hotel staff and guests.
KEY INSIGHTS
INITIAL Concept
The Scent Suite imagines the future of hospitality where scent marketing journeys from check-in, to the Scent Bar, to the guest’s room, and ends at the guest’s home.
Scent Research
When concepts began to move towards sensory experiences and interactive rooms, we visited local fragrance stores such
as Le Labo and Diptyque, spoke to create your own fragrance experiences at INDIEHOUSE Atlanta, and experienced the
World of Coca-Cola to learn more about fragrance and experience design.
User Testing
To test the experience, an enclosed test space with full scale artifacts were created. Print outs, digital interactive screens,
and essential oils were used to fully emulate the experience
of the Scent Suite for our hotel guests.
Final Design
The Scent Suite is designed to guide guests through an engaging, multi-sensory journey. The experience begins with an invitation at check-in, introducing guests to the
local fragrances. In the Discovery Lab, guests explore
scent capsules and create custom Scent Cards.
Once satisfied with their blend, guests move to the Scent Bar, where a specialist crafts their custom fragrance into a travel-size bottle and a flower diffuser. This layout balances self-guided exploration with personalized service, ensuring a memorable and immersive experience.
Discovery Lab
The Discovery Lab is the initial experience level that allows guests to freely explore and learn about the scents of the brand and region while crafting Scent Cards.
Each station has a table for guests to explore as well as a screen that helps to guide the experience and educate about each note and fragrance combination.
Experimental Table
The Experimental Table is the first step of the Discovery Lab that guides users to mix and create their custom scents, printing Scent Cards that can be turned into the Scent Bar for their personalized fragrance for use as a perfume or room diffuser.
Experimental Table Iterations
Initial Design: Lacked hierarchy, complex process, overwhelming instructions
First Iteration: ADDED SCENT PROFILING, simplified content design, decreased choice
Final Design: Overall instructions, cohesive graphics, intensity level cusomization
Information Screen
When a Scent Capsule is placed into the perfume mix slot, the screen will show information about the note such as note details, pairing recommendations and scent profile.
Scent Capsules
Capsules gain more ridges with each step, aiding users in slotting the sample notes correctly when mixing and streamlining the process, enhancing simplicity.
Scent Card
Once guests are happy with their blend, they can print a Scent Card that mixes the notes together so that they can experience the combined fragrance.
Similar to scratch and sniff samples, the ink is sealed in a thin coating and releases more scent when rubbed.
Perfume Bottle
The overall silhouette of the bottle is based on card sort findings which highlighted the importance of shapes
with cohesive variations to give users a sense of elegance and refinement.
Flower Diffuser
The paper diffuser is designed to resemble the regional flower of the location allowing guests to collect various regional notes and paper flowers as they visit different hotels that have partnered with the Scent Suite.
what makes a memory?
Through combining shared stories,
authentic connections,
and tailored experiences…
The Scent Suite serves to impart
memories across generations.