Role:
Founding Product Designer
System Scope
TV experience (guest-facing), mobile guidebook, and host management portal, connected through a shared data and layout system.
Duration:
May 2024 - Current
Status:
Used across 3,200+ properties in 36 countries.
/Overview
Leading the 0→1 Design of a Cross-Platform Hospitality Ecosystem
Large hotels solve the guest experience problem with expensive enterprise hardware, a solution that doesn't exist for independent hosts. WelcomeScreen built that layer for the short-term rental market.
My job was to design it across TV, web, and mobile in a way that gave hosts full control without making the guest experience feel managed.
/User Research & Insights
Designing for Two Audiences With Conflicting Needs
WelcomeScreen served two audiences who never shared an interface but were tightly coupled through the same system. Hosts configured content, branding, and rules through a centralized management portal. Guests never saw that interface at all, they only encountered the outcome: a TV and guidebook that needed to feel immediate, personal, and effortless on arrival.
A host in Tokyo could configure a welcome message, local recommendations, and house rules. A guest checking in at midnight in Oahu would see the result: a TV that felt personal and prepared, with no setup required on their end. The design had to make that handoff invisible.
/Problem Framing
Designing Under Device and Platform Constraints
Hosts and guests interacted with the system across fragmented TV platforms, each with different capabilities and constraints. Remote-only input, state persistence, and content updates introduced real limits on how the product could behave.
We had to design across
Fragmented TV Platforms
Fire TV, Google TV, Roku
Remote-Only Input
Directional navigation contraints
Key tradeoffs
Platform parity over platform optimization
Roku and Google TV have meaningfully different capabilities. Rather than optimizing for each separately, we maintained a shared interaction model across all platforms.
Moment-first experience before deep interaction
Early feedback pushed for more features at launch. Instead, we centered the product on a single arrival moment first, with interactive layouts introduced later as optional extensions.
Brand presence over full white-labeling
Hosts frequently requested full white-labeling. Instead, we kept a minimal on-screen brand to support long-term growth.
Curated media over unlimited content
Unlimited media felt like a feature. In practice it introduced performance issues and visual noise, so density and video length were intentionally limited.
Flexibility with guardrails
As the product scaled, edge cases multiplied. Rather than expanding the rules to cover everything, we supported customization while preserving layout constraints for system integrity.
Every tradeoff was a deliberate choice, not a compromise.
Constraints clarified priorities. The tighter the limits, the more intentional every decision had to be.
/System Flow
From reservation context to synchronized guest experiences
Before designing any screens, we mapped how reservation data and host-managed content flowed through the platform. The goal was to keep complexity in the backend so every guest-facing surface could stay simple and predictable.
/System in practice
AI-assisted content for hosts
Hosts managing multiple properties don't have time to manually research local recommendations for each one. With one click, the system generates property-specific suggestions pulled from the property's location context. Hosts review, curate, and publish. Guests see the result on TV and mobile.
/Cross-Surface Execution
From One System to Three Surfaces
With the system defined, the work shifted to how it translated across real surfaces. The portal, TV, and mobile each served a different user in a different context, but all drew from the same underlying data and layout system.
/Product in Practice
How the System Comes Together in Real Properties
A host configures content once. A guest arrives and it just works. These screens show how that handoff played out across the portal and the guest-facing surfaces.
/Outcome & Product Impact
From Architecture to Real-World Impact
WelcomeScreen shipped as a live product used by 600+ property managers across 3,200+ properties in 35 countries. Four core releases each drove measurable revenue growth: the Interactive TV experience, mobile guidebook, AI-driven recommendations, and host storefront.
What the work proved wasn't just that the system could scale. It was that designing the architecture before the interfaces meant every new feature reinforced the original interaction model rather than fighting it. The product grew without forcing rebuilds.
© Chrisk Studio
A focused selection of product work and the decisions behind it.
ZoneSage
Trustlenz
