Context
Royal Caribbean's private island, CocoCay, serves a fleet of over 68 ships reaching more than 1,000 destinations. While Royal Caribbean's ships are designed to accommodate guests with mobility disabilities, the island itself was still evaluating how to extend that same level of accessibility across its beaches. Our team partnered directly with Royal Caribbean, under NDA, to research and propose real solutions.
The Problem
We started broad:
After research, we narrowed it into something more specific and actionable:
Research
We conducted semi-structured interviews with two distinct groups, totaling over 10 hours:
- Royal Caribbean stakeholders: a Health & Safety Sustainability Senior Manager and a Senior Analyst in Disability Inclusion & ADA Compliance
- Community members: wheelchair users and beach-access advocates
We also benchmarked existing commercial solutions (MJM Beach Wheelchairs, SeaTrak, Mobi Mat) to understand what already existed in the market.
Key Findings
Four consistent pain points emerged:
- Lack of independence: most beach wheelchair solutions require 2–4 people to assist a single guest
- Current solutions are unfit for diverse mobility needs: one-size-fits-all equipment doesn't account for different body types or disabilities
- The transfer process itself: moving from a personal wheelchair into a beach-accessible one, and then into the water, is the most physically vulnerable moment
- Wheelchair access, storage, and security: guests had no confident way to store their personal wheelchairs while using the beach
Ideation & Iteration
My team and a second, independently-working Royal Caribbean team had each converged on a similar idea without knowing it: a "wheelchair library." Rather than treat that as redundant, we merged our groups to combine strengths, which shaped most of our iteration process going forward.
Wheelchair Library went through two early concepts: a tiki-style hut with retractable cable locks requiring an attendant, and self-service roped-off sections with a keypad lock, no attendant required.
"Ideally, there would be no service workers… but maybe they should have a call for help or additional assistance button if the person chooses to do so."
Royal Caribbean stakeholder, Disability Inclusion & ADA Compliance
Another stakeholder, from the Health & Safety Sustainability team, independently suggested the same direction, a cable lock system with a personal code and keypad, and additionally proposed adding a Hoyer Lift for supported transfers. We merged both sets of feedback into a refined Wheelchair Library: individual roped-off wheelchair spaces, a cable lock system accepting a personal code or a guest's SeaPass card, a Hoyer Lift available for supported transfers, and an "Ask for Help" button for guests who want it, without making staff assistance mandatory.
Beach wheelchair design went through similar scrutiny. Our first concept needed 2–4 assistants and couldn't fit through standard bathroom doorways. One stakeholder's direct feedback, "the seat height is too high," "would want it to get into the water," combined with a hard constraint (ADA toilet-seat-height standards of 17–19 inches), pushed our second iteration toward a lower-profile, more independently-operable design.
The Constraint: A Concept We Chose to Cut
Early on, we also designed a "Wheelchair Taxi," a pontoon boat with an extendable ramp that could ferry guests across the sand to reduce the most physically demanding part of the journey. We worked through real operational details: priority docking at Harbor Beach Bay, South Beach, Hideaway Beach, and Coco Beach, ADA-compliant ramp ratios (1:12), and environmental clearance requirements to protect the island's seagrass beds.
Ultimately, we determined this wasn't feasible for CocoCay specifically. The island's iron-shore coastline severely limits where permanent docks can be built. Rather than force a solution that didn't fit the site, we scoped it out of our final recommendation. That same stakeholder's reaction validated that call: they found the concept promising enough to suggest it for other Royal Caribbean destinations with different coastlines, even though it wasn't right here.
Outcome
In our final meeting, Royal Caribbean shared that they were already in the process of implementing a ramp system across CocoCay to improve guest transportation, independent confirmation that our research direction aligned with where the company was already headed.
My Role
Across the project, my specific contributions were research synthesis and interview question design, documenting key discussions with stakeholders, and structuring our final presentation so the pain points and proposed solutions flowed clearly for a non-technical audience. I worked alongside teammates who led the physical wheelchair design and CAD work.
Reflection
The biggest constraint on this project was one we couldn't design around: we never had direct, on-island access to test anything with real guests in the actual environment. Everything we learned came from remote interviews and stakeholder conversations rather than hands-on observation. Given more time, on-site testing with the actual beach terrain and real wheelchair users would have been the clear next step, something I'd prioritize earlier in any future version of this process.