Soho House
Luxury digital re-design for Soho House member's experience.
IOS App
Role
Lead Product Designer
Work
Product Strategy
User Research
UX/UI Design
Results
16% Increase in Bookings
22% Increase in Engagment
4.8 Star App Store Rating
Members of Soho House are often in the creative industries and have high expectations. They had expressed disappointment in the app with general feedback that it had an uninspiring design and complex interface.
Members rely on the app to get the most from their membership, connect with other members, learn what's on, book restaurants, events and house stays. The feedback showed a disconnect between the physical experience in the member’s clubs and the digital experience.
I led an app redesign, focusing on members' needs, simplifying core journeys and delivering an updated visual interface synonymous with the brand's luxury aesthetic. Below, I share some of the design details, processes & outcomes.
Member Insights
I set up and conducted one-on-one research sessions with members from around the globe. In each session I used a card sorting exercise to collate how members prioritised their app features and captured their current frustrations with the digital experience uncovering any hidden challenges they faced with the app.
I distilled and grouped the insights from the user research into three actionable themes.
"App's unexciting, I prefer to just go and see what's on, but I sometimes miss out on the good events." - Member Quote
"The app's very generic, show me events I'm interested in, you know my interests and history." - Member Quote
"It's too difficult to cancel events or change room bookings; I just email in, and they are very friendly." - Member Quote
Business Objectives
The redesign needed to balance members' needs with the business's strategic priorities. To incorporate both effectively, I ran internal workshops to socialise the member's feedback I had gathered and integrate ideas and insights from the core teams involved with the redesign.
Strategic Objectives:
Improving experience
By increasing member satisfaction
Increase bookings
By more hotel, restaurant and event bookings
Drive footfall
By increasing member & guest occupancy
Club Space
Set within an old Methodist church dating back to 1894, explore the unique space.
Soho House Stockholm
Cecconi’s
Serves Italian dishes with a Scandinavian twist.
Book a table
Soho House Stockholm
Personal & Relevant Design
To create a design that could scale and promote personalisation, I created a modular design, to keep the app feeling fresh and relevant every time a member logs in. I designed the “What’s On” and “Where to Eat” modules, so they were dynamically tailored to member’s geo location and a ‘Promoted Events’ module relevant to their interests and history data.
To improve relevancy, I designed the ‘Upcoming Bookings’ module so that it displayed all of a members bookings chronologically in one place. This ensured it acted as a reminder of what members have planned and streamlined their ability to manage bookings. A task that involved unifying the design, flow and UX for four different teams each with a different technology stacks.
Featured Content
The old app lacked visual hierarchy and had an uninspiring design. All content was shown in the same small carrousel meaning popular events were easily missed and resulted in low booking rates for hotel rooms.
To create a more impactful design I created the ‘Spotlight’ module which was inspired by threaded social stories. The module can be adapted to promote and showcase exclusive short-form content in a stylish format, creating a more exploratory experience for members leveraging Soho House’s highly curated editorial content.
This gave Soho a modern way to engage users with a variety of new content. It helped drive sales for events like the Soho House Festival, the launch of the new Soho Home collection and increased engagement and bookings for hotel rooms at featured house locations.
Checked In Experience
The Checked-In Experience was a totally new concept which I successfully pitched internally to support feedback from members that often the house and app felt disconnected. My design transformed the app when a member checks into a Soho House, immersing members with club specific info, events and current restaurant availability alongside other specific club offerings like gym classes and spa treatments.
The design improved the process for settling tabs, allowing members to pay directly through the app and helped highlight connections within the club, showing members people they know and suggesting new connections, reinforcing the creative, network-driven spirit of Soho House.
Club Profiles
Another frustration uncovered from the research was that members found it hard to find details about each of the clubs before visiting. Each club can vary dramatically, so knowing if a club has a gym, what time it opens, where the laptop-friendly spaces are, or if the club has parking were frequently asked questions that often ended up in unnecessary support contact.
So as part of the work to design and build new API’s to support details of each club to deliver for the checked in design, I was able to reuse components to create the ‘House Profile Page’. A dedicated space for each of the 44 clubs directly within the app. A simple and effective way for members to quickly find location-specific information, view high-quality photos of individual club spaces and learn about the amenities news or practical updates.