Real World Project Lab

Professor + Project Manager; Design for Hospitality

After successfully securing a partnership with Ode Hotel and The Planet Traveler Hostel, my class delivered 2 concepts each for the 2 partners. Received positive reviews for the projects from the partners and a high score on the Student Feedback Questionnaire about the overall learning experience of this class.

Time Frame
January - April 2024

Project Summary
As the professor for this course, I also served as the project manager for four distinct projects. I developed the curriculum and timelines, secured industry partners, and facilitated real-world experience for the students.

I guided them through the design thinking process, organized usability testing with Tobii eye-tracking glasses, and coordinated interactions with partners to validate and refine their concepts, culminating in presentations at the Year End Show (YES!) Exhibition.

Team
15 students from the Bachelors of Digital Experience Design program at George Brown College

Tasks accomplished for this course:

  • Develop curriculum and timelines for project delivery.

  • Create a presentation to present the course outcomes and pitch the school as a partner for the hospitality industry.

  • Find and bring in partners for students to be able to get some real-world experience (Ode and Planet Traveler).

  • Invite partners to come in and present information about their hotel/hostel and talk about some problems they face as SMBs. Students were then tasked to create research reports to understand the industry further and explore ideas that could be incorporated into the current working models for the partners.

  • Guide students through the design thinking process, challenging them to push boundaries along the way as they did their research and developed their concepts.

  • These ideas/solutions were then pitched to the partners to understand their POV and validate/invalidate thoughts and assumptions.

  • Hosted a guest lecturer to discuss service blueprints – this helped the students understand the existing service from a FOH and BOH perspective. It also helped them to find gaps in the existing service and understand how each of their “new” ideas fit into a currently existing services provided by the hotel/hostel.
    Special thanks to Caleigh Oxley for the lecture and helping students with their Service Blueprints.

  • These ideas were then presented to the partners who helped validate research and conceptual designs. Once finalized, each group developed their concept further.

  • Facilitate usability testing sessions using Tobii eye-tracking glasses (https://www.tobii.com/products/eye-trackers#wearables) .

  • Coordinate, lead and manage meetings with partners and students.

  • Deliver 2 concepts each to the two industry partners.

  • Host student projects at the Year End Show (YES!) Exhibition.

Discussed the principles of usability testing, and then helped students conduct usability tests on their prototypes using the Tobii eye-tracking glasses at the usability lab.

Students presented their work to the clients, and then again at the Year End Show YES! at the School of Design at George Brown College.

The two groups for Planet Traveler solved two unique problems:

  1. Group 1 created an app exclusive to planet traveler to let guests create and join events. This was aimed to help promote social gatherings for hostel guests, which in turn helps with guest retention.

  2. Group 2 created a digital journal and showcased how it would fit within the existing website to help with increased web traffic, social media engagement, and return bookings.

The two groups for Ode Hotel solved two unique problems:

  1. Group 1 created a better way for Ode to manage rooftop bookings in order to help reduce the time spent going back and forth about guest requirements and rules & regulations. It was also created to help upsell Ode and their partner vendors’ & artists’ products and services.

  2. Group 2 created an interactive room platform to help upsell Ode and their partner vendors’ & artists’ products and services.

Students with their posters at the year end show.

Students present their work to attendees.

A guest adds a story to our map.

What students said about this course

  • Amazing Professor. Actually cares about our future and what we are learning and if it's actually valuable to the profession we are entering. It's unfortunate we couldn't have had him as our Program Director, he would've made sure we learned much more important things in the 2 years we've already been here. I wish we could have a part 2 to the classic at least. Very cool guy, super chill, and deserves a raise.

    Anonymous, Student Feedback Questionnaire

  • Arjit is very understanding and meets his students where they are at. He designed the course delivery considering the students learning first, wanting us to absorb as much information as possible. He is available for questions outside of course material and goes above and beyond to support us. My favourite professor this semester, I learned the most in this class. I also feel that this class was the most relevant to us students for post grad, and made us feel more prepared. provide a peer evaluation to ensure the accurate division of communication, participation, and work load.

    Anonymous, Student Feedback Questionnaire

  • Arjit's class was great, he provided us with a lot of resources to help us on our projects and even helped us prepare for our portfolios. His decision to bring real–life clients/partners to class to give us real–life problems to solve and pitch for was extremely helpful, it helped us develop our presentations, research, and testing and he also gave us access to the school's resources (user–testing) that we would have never had an opportunity for otherwise. His lectures are informative and well–constructed, and he leaves us breaks in between each concept for questions to elaborate on further. The only thing he needed improvement on was being clearer with group assignments, like clearly letting us know what is to be worked on as a group or individually, what he was looking for, and to make sure he writes a clear description on his assignments folder and announcements over D2L. Overall, Arjit's class was always great, he gives us great feedback every time we do group checkups and always challenges us to test our skills. His class is the type to never consider skipping as you will miss very important information.

    Anonymous, Student Feedback Questionnaire

What the partners said about the deliverables

  • “You should be really proud. You engaged with what we said really well. You created some cool ideas. I saw the ideas that didn’t get implemented (in a previous presentation) but there were some really strong ideas there as well. I’m impressed; it makes me optimistic for the future so I think you should be very proud of what you’ve achieved.”

    Comment extracted from email

  • “I also like the idea of because we want to maximize the revenue on the rooftop and make it easy for us to eliminate the events that do not match what we're looking for. So I like the idea of having this digital…questionnaire and also to help the person who is coming in to actually design a program to see [that] the deck works for their event. So, a lot of it is eliminated before it gets to us. I think those 2 concepts were excellent. Excellent.”

    Comment receved in class

  • "...I had a big smile on my face listening to everyone. I feel like they engaged really well with the market and our goals as a business and that every suggestion was valuable and well thought out. In fact a lot of the ideas were more impressive than pitches we get from actual Hostel conferences so kudos to the students for that.”

    Comment extracted from email

What I learned and what I would improve next time:

  • Since this was my first time teaching a course with external partners, it was challenging in various aspects.

  • I would have liked to start finding partners a little earlier. The educational system usually works at a slower pace than corporate environments so it’s important to ensure that we can keep all parties informed and on the same page early on in the process. Since I got to know most of the processes along the way, it was challenging to know what was and was not within the scope of the educational environment.

  • Acquiring more funding/incentives for the students. While there are lots of considerations with this piece, having some funds/incentives would be a great perk for the performance of the class. Since there are real clients involved and while the learning opportunity is immense, I do not want to promote spec work.

  • Better organization from the start; The students graded the course lower on organizational aspects; I believe this was because each project was a little different and needed separate attention, but I certainly think that I could improve this moving forward by applying a more granular organization.

  • The students require a lot more help with a project like this at the start of a semester and showing examples/providing templates/setting up specific requirements early helps run the class a lot smoother. This way, students know what to expect; in turn, grading also becomes easier.

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