OfficeTogether Group Reservations
User Problem / Opportunity
Previously, users could only book for one person at a time. Company admins wanted the ability to create an “event” where they could invite multiple employees for team meetings or office events.
Business Goals
Customer acquisition. We had a large customer who said they would sign on if we added this feature.
Role
Sole Product Designer & Product Manager
Worked with a team of ~5 engineers to implement
Project Timeline
2 weeks
Responsibilities
Product management
User research
Interaction design
Usability testing
Visual design (shared responsibility)
Users & Qualitative Research
I spent 5-10 hours per week speaking with customers, and this was the most requested feature I’d been hearing. When a major potential client agreed to sign if we built it, the founder and I decided to fast-track the project.
For this reason, user research was informal. I set up a few calls with company admins who had been asking for this, and asked them some questions about their needs.
Research-Informed Planning
The top use cases I heard were:
Team managers wanted to reserve desks together for team event days.
Office admins needed to reserve seats for events and invite large groups.
This informed my decision to refer to these as “events” in the product, and only show the “create an event” option to managers and admins.
Design Iteration
Due to the tight timeline, I had a quick brainstorm with the sales team who was closest to the most important soon-to-be client, and mocked up a user flow for testing.
Usability Testing
I ran a quick usability test on usertesting.com with 6 users.
Most users went to “Add reservation” rather than the new “Create an event”.
Most users expected to be added to the event by default and were confused about whether they were on the invite.
Some users had a hard time understanding the number of attendees on their event, or what “Reserved” meant on the invite list.
Some users had a hard time realizing they could open the seat map
Some users weren’t sure what to name their event, even after being prompted on what they were inviting their team in for.
Usability Updates
I stopped referring to these as “Events” in the UI, and changed the language to “Add guests” to a reservation.
I added the creator to the reservation by default, and made the invite list clearer by putting it alongside a seat map.
I made the seat map always-visible rather than hiding it in an accordion.
I made the title field optional, and moved it lower in the hierarchy to deemphasize.
Visual Design
I was responsible for the visual design on the iteration of this project, but the existing visual design of these screens was done by another team member.
Impact
We released an initial version of the feature, and multiple clients signed with us as a direct result.
Qualitative feedback from existing customers was very positive and this remained a core feature through acquisition.
Surprises & What I’d Do Differently
Users interpreted “event” differently than i expected. While the term came directly from user conversations, what made sense in discussion didn’t translate well in the UI. I also overlooked how strongly users would default to the familiar “add reservation” flow.
If I were to do this again, I’d lean more into building off existing patterns instead of introducing something new. A quick internal Figma prototype with alternate wording like “invite teammates” could’ve helped surface these issues earlier.
