OfficeTogether Group Reservations
User Problem / Opportunity
Previously, users could only book for one person at a time, but 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
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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.
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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.
I also heard both of those groups say that they didn’t want non-managers to have this privilege.
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.
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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.
*Please pardon the crude visual design. This was a very early MVP and we de-prioritized visual design in favor of speed.
Usability Testing
I tested with 6 participants, most of whom went to the “Add reservation” button rather than the “Create an event” button.
Most users also expected to be added to the event by default and were confused about whether they were on the invite.
A couple of the users had a hard time understanding the number of attendees on their event, or what “Reserved” meant on the invite list.
And lastly, users weren’t sure what to name their event, even after being prompted on what they were inviting their team in for.
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Usability Updates
In response to the test findings, I made a few updates:
I stopped referring to these as “Events” in the UI, and changed the language to “Add guests” to a reservation. This also allowed the create button to go where users expected it to be in the test.
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 title field optional, and moved it lower in the hierarchy to deemphasize.
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Visual Design
I was responsible for all of the visual design on this project, although the team decided at the beginning of the project that visual design would need to take a backseat in favor of a very quick turnaround.
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 also very positive.
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Surprises & What I’d Do Differently
The biggest surprise was that users didn’t understand "events" in the UI, even though admins we spoke to all used that term.
This project was obviously a fast-tracked version of my usual design process, but it reinforced the importance of usability testing. My initial design was based on what admins and salespeople said they wanted, but testing revealed it wouldn’t have worked. This proved the value of focusing on users’ problems rather than their proposed solutions.
If I did this project again, I’d spend more time understanding user needs upfront. But given the timeline, I’m proud of what we accomplished.
