Co-creating ideas to nurture innovation culture at BP,
using behavioural experiements

Challenges of designing for NEOM

Uncharted territory — we are creating a new destination in the desert where nothing exists.
There is no legacy to limit our thinking. We are working with uncertainty, endless decisions need to be made by different teams.

Speed of change — teams and projects are moving very fast, creating an ever-changing landscape of fragmented solutions.
Frequent change of key points of contact lead to a lack of awareness and communication.

Bigger picture.— people are immersed in their own projects and very few people see how their work contributes to the bigger picture and a limited understanding of connections and dependencies

Approach

We researched Global Tourism trends, focusing on luxury travel and understanding the mindset and the needs of high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals. Their priorities and preferences when arranging travel for their families and entourage.

We immersed ourselves in the NEOM Tourism ecosystem to understand the key actors, their relationships and value exchange.

We Interviewed the key actors of the NEOM Tourism Ecosystem

• Immersed in NEOM Tours experiences — went on hikes in the desert and the mountains, visited tombs, historical sites and snorkelled in the Red Sea

• Attended first ever sporting event — NEOM Beach Games

• Interviewed Tourism and Region stakeholders

We developed a Flexible, Modular, Nested Service Design Framework, which allows to map out real life journeys with any level of complexity and any number of variations. The journeys are designed on macro-level — high-level stages and steps and macro-level — diving into the details of how each step would work.

Service Design framework

Macro-journeys

Macro-journeys are high-level journeys that provide an overview of the key steps of one stage in end-to-end visitor journey.
We design and present them to senior stakeholders, client and partner leadership to introduce them to visitor experience. Example: book a trip to NEOM.

Micro-journeys

Micro-journeys explain how each step of the journey will work in sufficient detail to deliver it.
They provide a single version of the truth and guidance for internal teams and external partners delivering every aspect of visitor experience. Teams that actively used our micro-journeys included: product design, content, marketing, development, tech architecture snd operations. Example: book an activity.

Variations journeys

Variations journeys illustrate variations of the same micro-journey with unique requirements. Teams and partners, which co-created and used variation journeys included individual operators (e.g. diving and waterspouts, spa, golf) and destination management companies, product, content, marketing and delivery teams. Example: book a diving course, book golf.

Tourism Ecosystem and our role as guardians of visitor journey

Visitor experience is co-created by dozens of partners. Our role was to support the region team in orchestrating this complex ecosystem to provide seamless and inspiring experience visitors will never forget. Our role was to provide the North Star of the visitor experience and clearly communicate to areas of responsibility, activities and deliverables of each partner required to provide the desired experience. We show how each project contributes to the bigger picture and what connections and dependencies are.

Aligning service design with product design and delivery process

We established an effective experience design and delivery process, aligning service and product design.

We established a core working team with representatives of business leadership, operations, service design, product, marketing and technology, which defined business goals and requirements for each stage of visitor experience.

Service design team defined experience goals and created journeys to bring to life visitor experience. Service Designers worked with the core team and relevant stakeholders to create a blueprint, defining everything that needs to be true to deliver the visitor experience. The output of this work included product, technology, data, operations requirements, finance and legal considerations. Blueprint work resulted in asking many questions were not discussed before and a thorough evaluation of all experience enablers. Product managers used the blueprints to write product specs, epics and user stories.

UX&UI team created designs and prototypes of the digital experience, which were regularly reviewed by the core team to ensure alignment with the experience vision.

Experience mapping helped to plan how experience would develop over time, e.g. what it would look like at launch, in 6 months, in 12 months time etc. Co-creating future visions with key partners enabled alignment of road maps as well as coordinating efforts and re-using assets and capabilities as much as possible.

Overall this process proved to be very effective in executing experience strategy, from setting business and experience goals all the way to delivering each element of the visitor journey.

Outcomes

We established an effective experience design process and a nimble, modular, nested framework that is fit for purpose for defining the infinite variety of experiences that real users have.

This framework is applicable to most complex organisations and can be adapted to support their needs.

Next steps

• Clear alignment and tracking of company and experience goals to opportunities and solutions

• Using AI for rapid journey development

• Closer integration of journeys and product management systems and success metrics