Hey Disney!

Hey Disney! is an interactive smart speaker and display in Walt Disney World resort rooms.

Challenge: As Disney and Amazon Alexa teams were working together to design and develop Hey Disney!, they were looking to gather feedback on the voice command experience and better understand user behavior as Guests interact with device.

Research: I planned and executed an evaluative UX research study of the Hey Disney! device.

Impact: I presented my findings and recommendations to the project teams, which they used to further iterate on the Hey Disney! experience.

As lead of this study, I managed all aspects of its planning and execution.

Though I was the UX research lead, another team within Disney led overall research for Hey Disney!. I worked with that team to build on their prior research and establish how my UX work would progress the overall Hey Disney! research goals.

Once we established this background, I began by creating a project plan, which included the UX objectives, methodology, target participants, and a roadmap for the sessions. I then created the recruitment screener, which the recruiting team used to find participants, as well as the discussion guide, which I used to moderate sessions.

I collaborated with various internal teams to manage the logistics of this in-person study:
> Tech: I oversaw camera and microphone placement to capture the necessary angles and audio to stream and record sessions for remote viewing
> Recruiting: I made decisions to ensure we engaged an appropriate set of participants, both when recruiting prior to sessions and in-the-moment
> Resorts: I managed set-up of both the room in which interviews took place and the backroom, as well as ensured participants were able to access the space
> Hey Disney!: I worked with the team to set up the device for each session and ensure back-up devices were ready

I moderated all 14 sessions of the study, during which I observed and spoke to travel parties of one to five people. During these sessions, I communicated with the Hey Disney! team to ensure the research was meeting their goals and answered their questions.

As needed, I also adjusted the discussion guide and the flow of sessions in response to the team’s suggestions and in order to gain new insights as the study progressed. In doing so, I had to balance fielding the teams’ requests with maintaining good UX research practice. I worked with the Hey Disney! research team to ensure these adjustments were always in line with the high-level research goals.

Between moderating sessions, I wrote summary bulletpoints of consistent findings for reference once the sessions were complete. By quickly writing top-of-mind thoughts in between sessions, I found synthesis and analysis to be a faster and easier task at the end of the project.

The day after I completed sessions, I wrote and sent out a topline of main findings for the Hey Disney! team. This summary gave them learnings to consider as soon as possible while I put together a full report. In addition to providing the project team with some quick findings, the topline gave me a point of reference to work off of when I prepared the report.

I also worked with the Hey Disney! research team at the end of the project to create a presentation they led for executives. This presentation included, among other things, a high-level summary of the UX research I conducted.

In the following couple weeks, I synthesized detailed learnings, pulled together video clips from the sessions to support my findings, and created recommendations to improve the user experience. I organized all of these items into a deck that I presented and then sent to the team to use as they iterated on the Hey Disney! experience.