As hotel systems have become more sophisticated (which is to say more complicated), designing successful user screens has become more challenging (and more important). Screens on the latest generation of hotel systems prioritize simplicity, clarity and speed-of-use.
A History Lesson
Reaching that goal of effective screen design hasn’t been easy for our industry. Many years ago, when I was designing my then hotel company employer’s first computerized reservation system, screen design began on graph paper. Knowing the number of lines per screen and characters per line, I blocked out the fields and set field names for each reservation creation/change, inventory maintenance, and reservation administration screen. Each data input field required numerous decisions, including characters allowed, entries allowed (just Y or N, for example), minimum and maximum character count, whether completion was optional or mandatory, and the sequence options for field completion. Not surprisingly, it was a learning experience. At one point my colleagues and I agreed that guest surnames would need to consist of a minimum of three characters.
Then we recalled that the surname of one of our executives was Ip. We promptly revised our business rule for guest name length to two characters. I think the centralissue in the evolution of hotel computer system screens was that for the system developers — be they hotel companies launching in-house teams or external technology suppliers — this was an entirely new endeavor. We had no existing processes to apply to the tasks. We had no veteran specialists to rely on, such as experienced computer display designers. It was a learning experience for us. We were all first- timers learning on the job.
Two decades later, we’ve made significant progress in recognizing the vital role a computer system’s user interface plays in the development of sophisticated tools and techniques for screen development, and in nurturing screen design specialists. Graph paper-based screen design is now a distant memory.
The Rise of Heuristics
This evolution of hotel system screen design into a respected specialty included heightened focus on system usability, including the application of a pivotal specialty — heuristics. This science is focused on self-guided process completion and problem solving. In this case, that’s the efficient comprehension and completion of a computer screen by a user.
Usability specialists and heuristics scientists created usability laboratories to test the ease and success of screen use and suggest refinements to hospitality system screen designs. Sabre Hospitality was an early and aggressive adopter of this method. In addition to repeatedly staging tests to observe and learn from user screen use success or struggles, Sabre astutely included visits to its usability lab in many client site visits and sales meetings. The goal: To boost the company’s image as a
leader in understanding and leveraging this emerging science.
Hotel systems have progressed considerably, although arguably not far enough. While it’s natural to compare our progress in hotel system screen design sophistication with that of our competitors, I believe that’s also something of a cop-out. Today’s hospitality staffers are deeply computer literate. The screen design of what we might term “consumer” or “retail” systems is second nature to them. The bold simplicity of Facebook, the sleek, intuitiveness of TikTok and Instagram, the revolutionary simplicity of Google, now set the standard. These products deliver the benchmarks against which hotel staff compare their system screens. In that respect, we still have a good distance to go. But that gap between our systems’ screen design and user interface best practice is closing. We’re making progress. Today I see unprecedented attention to usability, device-specific design, and work-from-anywhere clarity of presentation and ease of use.
I’m pleased with the advances we’ve made, although I periodically ask myself, “Is it enough?” Then I ask: “Will it matter?”This second question is prompted by the broad and rapid incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) into hotel systems and operations. I wonder how AI adoption will impact property management systems (PMS), for example. Will some workflows be eliminated? Will the PMS itself be eliminated? Will those who use user interfaces (and systems) be eliminated?
We’ve made design progress. Our systems are much more usable than they were a decade, or even a year ago, but we must strive to continually improve our screen designs. And we must remain agile because these systems are going to fundamentally change in the next two, three, or five years. In the “love/hate” relationship with hotel user displays, love is winning, but the ride is far from over.
