Role:
Product Designer, Co-Founder
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:
Actively used across 3,000+ properties.
/Overview
Leading the 0→1 Design of a Cross-Platform Hospitality Ecosystem
Leading the 0→1 design of WelcomeScreen, a cross-platform hospitality system that transformed the TV from a passive screen into an active product surface for short-term rentals.
The gap: Large hotels rely on dedicated hardware and enterprise systems to customize guest experiences and drive upsells. These solutions are expensive and operationally heavy, leaving most short-term rental operators with underutilized TVs despite their presence in nearly every property.
The challenge: Build a system that works reliably across fragmented TV platforms while balancing centralized control for hosts with immediate clarity for guests encountering the product for the first time.
The outcome: A cross-platform ecosystem that turns platform constraints into advantages, giving hosts scalable control while delivering a simple, intuitive guest experience.
/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.
Early in the work, it became clear that hosts and guests interacted with the product in fundamentally different ways. Hosts configured content, branding, and rules through a centralized management system, while 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.
Designing the system required first understanding how operational intent on the host side translated into a human experience for guests, often without any direct interaction.
/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.
The goal was to design a system that operated reliably across host and guest lifecycles while respecting hardware and operational realities.
We had to design a product that worked across:
Fragmented TV Platforms
Fire TV, Google TV, Roku
Remote-Only Input
Directional navigation contraints
Key tradeoffs base on contraints
Platform parity over platform optimization
We maintained a shared interaction model across TV platforms rather than optimizing for platform-specific capabilities.
Moment-first experience before deep interaction
The product centered on a single arrival moment first, with interactive layouts introduced later as optional extensions.
Brand presence over full white-labeling
We kept a minimal on-screen brand to support long-term growth despite requests for full white-labeling.
Curated media over unlimited content
Media density and video length were intentionally limited to preserve clarity, performance, and cost.
Flexibility with guardrails
We supported expanded customization where needed while preserving layout constraints for clarity and system integrity.
/System Architecture
Mapping How Data Flows Across the Ecosystem
Before designing any interface, we defined how hosts, content, and devices would connect.
Mapping the system first allowed complexity to live in the platform, not at the surface.
/System Architecture
From System Architecture to Interface Execution
With the system defined, the work shifted to how it expressed itself across real surfaces.
A single system powered the portal, TV, and mobile experiences, each optimized for its context without fragmenting the underlying logic.
/User Research & Insights
How the System Comes Together in Real Properties
With constraints defined and system boundaries mapped, the focus shifted to reliability in real properties.
Hosts configured content and rules in advance through a web portal. That configuration was translated into a live, on-property experience designed to feel immediate and trustworthy at the moment of arrival.
This section shows how the system operated end-to-end without exposing complexity to guests.
/Outcome & Product Impact
From Architecture to Real-World Impact
What shipped
Live and actively used by 600+ property managers
Deployed across 3,000+ properties in 35+ countries
Delivered as a multi-surface system spanning TV, web, and mobile
Enabled multi-property management through centralized templates and controls
What the system enabled
Centralized content updates across all guest-facing surfaces
Remote-first interaction patterns validated on real consumer hardware
A modular foundation supporting expansion into guidebooks, insights, and AI-driven features
Feature growth that reinforced extensibility and supported recurring revenue
What this demonstrates
Designing for unknown users at global scale, without onboarding or support
Translating system architecture into reliable, real-world experiences
Building durable UX under platform, hardware, and operational constraints
Owning product outcomes beyond launch, from architecture through adoption
What began as a single TV surface evolved into a connected system that balanced host efficiency, guest clarity, and long-term scalability, demonstrating how durable architecture enables products to grow without sacrificing trust.
© Chrisk Studio
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