Welcome by Accor: Generative AI elevates Designers into strategic Makers, powered by data

Many feared Generative AI would sideline designers. At Accor, it did the reverse: it freed up their time, sharpened their purpose, and amplified their strategic voice. This is Welcome—one of our flagship missions at Thiga—and what it reveals about data-fed design at last.

The turning point

Imagine an Accor designer exploring a new capability. Discovery is done: customer behaviors analyzed with Contentsquare, user feedback consolidated, journeys broken down. One heavy step remains before the first mockup: translating signals into a concrete experience and visual directions that align with the Design System. That step usually burns hours and splits thinking across tools. But Welcome fuses it—in minutes.Welcome is an AI copilot, built natively inside Figma by Accor’s design teams and driven by Thomas Vidal, Partner at Thiga and VP Product Design for Accor at Thiga.The result: Design System-aligned directions—ready to stress-test in an ideation workshop.

The real problem isn’t AI. It’s designing without data.

Let’s start with the problem. Accor’s design teams (50+ product designers, 45+ brands, 5,600 hotels, 10,000 restaurants) faced the issues that many Design orgs come up against. At La Product Conf 2025, Thomas described them as three main blockers: fragmented data access, perpetual delivery mode, and no space left for strategy or creativity.Meanwhile, expectations explode with +250% increase in demand for design skills in ten years (LinkedIn, 2023). But the broader the mandate, the tighter the squeeze. Many top designers end up just producing nonstop—when the real need is the ability to zoom out to see the bigger picture.Our stance at Thiga is straightforward: the true risk to design isn’t AI—it’s decision-making without data. Design intent without user signals is just another opinion. That’s the insight behind Welcome, shared by Thomas and Thiga.

Welcome: AI that serves intent

Welcome is more than a generator. It’s a copilot—literally: framing an intent, then justifying it. There are four pillars to how Welcome does this:: generate relevant mockups, explore variations on demand, focus attention on what matters, and embody Accor’s design culture.Meanwhile its architecture stands on two layers. The signal layer: consolidated user feedback, real usage metrics, observed behaviors. And the strategy layer: certified Design System components, accessibility rules, UX principles, brand tokens, tone of voice. Welcome connects them to recommend a well-reasoned direction. So designers can maintain control—and go further.

Contentsquare: analytics in a designer’s language

On the signal side, Contentsquare is the bedrock. It offers user behaviors already in context. The effort shifts from producing analysis to catching and activating the right signals: the friction that breaks a journey, the hesitation before a drop-off, the viewed-but-inactive area. For designers, these are directly actionable.That’s why Generative AI can use it. Welcome doesn’t chew raw data; it reasons over qualified behavioral signals. Contentsquare’s clear reading and rich experience metrics turn a dashboard into design material and allow the copilot to say “this is the right direction—and why” instead of “this is a likely screen.”Culturally, it’s a deep shift. Voice of Customer stops living only in analytics; it becomes a designer’s daily tool.That’s how you build data-informed ways of working: surface the right data at the decision point.

Proof in the numbers

A key indicator: 2–3× faster discovery cycles. On recurring templates, a day’s work drops to minutes. On a chatbot project, an interactive prototype landed in two days, down from two to three weeks. With Figma Make plus Welcome, the team now explores five viable ideation tracks in a single session.

From output producer to strategic Maker

Thomas’s formula captures the essence of Welcome perfectly: “Designers: from Producers to Makers.”. Welcome is not a productivity hack—it’s a design repositioning tool.When a copilot absorbs recurring execution, the question is what you do with the saved time. At Accor, they reinvest it in experience strategy, the invisible-but-decisive details, and the dialogue with the business. Designers stop being default producers under pressure. They become Makers again: strategist-craftspeople bridging customer expectations, brand promise, and product feasibility. As Jonathan Ive^[0], (quoted by Thomas) said: “Design is an expression of our care for others.” AI matters only if it brings designers back to that care.[0: Jonathan Paul Ive is a British-American industrial designer, former Chief Design Officer at Apple, where he led product design from 1996 to 2019.]

Three takeaways to scale a data-led design practice

01 / AI needs a strong baseGenerative AI shines only with a solid base: a mature Design System, structured content operations, and a working loop of user insights. 80% of Welcome’s value comes from pre-AI groundwork.02 / Automate convergence, not the craftWelcome doesn’t replace design. It accelerates the path to the right intent.03 / Judge posture change, not time savedIf after three months teams do the same things faster, the tool has failed. If they do different things—more strategic, more differentiating, more emotional—the investment has paid off.

Smarter, faster, easier—for experiences you can feel

The name isn’t random. At Accor, “Welcome” is also the name of the company Design System. Deeper still, it’s the promise to every guest. Naming the copilot “Welcome” set a clear intent: AI isn’t here to replace hospitality. It’s invited to join it.Thomas’s conclusion isn’t about the tool but its aim: craft experiences customers will truly feel. That’s the message for design leaders who look at Generative AI with both appetite and concern. The tools exist. The numbers are here. The hard part remains: decide what you want to free up your designers to do.

ABOUT THIGA

A pioneer in Product Management and Product Design in France since 2014, Thiga is a consulting and training firm that helps organizations define strategy, design, and scale digital products. Our 200+ Product and AI experts work in France and Spain across consulting, coaching, and hands-on support—with one priority: help design and product teams scale with AI, without losing intent.