What is it?

This system combines up-to-date venue and suppliers information, supplied from different resources. Via its cloud based interface, it allows users to search, enquire, book, track, report and manage enquiries for meeting and conference venues. It offers event planners venue rates, contacts, documentation and accounting benefits.

Design Objective

With a system that nears one billion pounds worth of enquiries, filtered through it’s system on an annual basis. I was given the task to re-design the entire user interface and experience of the system in order to define a more streamline approach between connecting venues and agents to clients.

Before / After

Research

In order to understand how the design will look and feel I first had to get a grasp of what this system does as well as how and why it functions. Then look at the people it aims to solve a series of issues for but to start with it meant working with people from a variety of departments within my venue company. I started with the core fundamentals of how the venues interact with clients and agents to reach an agreement regarding a booking or enquiry. Then I sat with the people who receive the most complaints regarding the system once I had a foundation of knowledge. Slowly but surely moving my way around the company gathering as much information as possible from the Sales team to QA, the developers and eventually management. Once I felt I could explain how the process works and then how it might benefit from certain improvements, I set about creating a design system.

How I did it

Customer Insights & Ideation

Studying similar alternative bookings systems as well as the original in depth gave great insight into best practices before designing. Also talking with users to gain feedback into how the current system worked allowed for me to understand what improvements were a necessity and those that were not. The idea to build a CRM for user management and tracking of content was also ideal as it meant all data incoming or outgoing could be tracked in a more user friendly manner.

Experience Strategy & Vision

I created wireframes and prototypes to explore the vision, design principles and content strategy. This helped me to clearly visualise ideas, gain alignment and drive decision making.

Planning & Scope Definition

I defined the project through gaining an insight initially by communicating with all areas of each team within the company to focus on both the user and customer service needs to identify strategic business goals.

Organisation & Co-ordination

Organisation is key on this project and ensuring all elements were co-ordinated to come together in one well maintained user experience. This was done through creating the design system for a streamlined approach to both the design and development.

Design Execution & Validation

I executed user journeys, wireframes, design specifications, focus groups, high fidelity designs and finally prototypes.

Creating a Design System

Starting from scratch felt like the best way to keep a consistent visual approach to both the user interface and experience of the entire project and what better way than to create a style guide for both myself and the developers to follow. Below is one page taken from the design system alongside it’s implementation into a page of the booking system.

The End Product