School Space is a social enterprise working in collaboration with schools in London and Oxford. The startup helps schools hire out their facilities to privates in order to provide them with a hassle-free booking experience, create a deeper sense of community and raise funds for the schools.
My ROLE
I was hired to create a platform that would automate customer bookings which were previously made over the phone. I was in charge of every stage of the product design, from user research to UI through information architecture workshops and whiteboard brainstorming sessions.
The initial phase of the project was user research. This was a collaborative process, with stakeholders providing input and feedback at every round.
User personas were made for every user type using the many customer interviews and user data provided by School Space.
Empathy maps were created in order to familiarise with the personas. These personas were then put in scenarios to create high level user journey maps highlighting pain points and opportunities.
I made a content inventory of the existing customer facing website and integrated that content with proposed content for the new platform. I then run a workshop using a card sorting exercise in order to be on the same page about classification and labelling. This also helped in making a content audit. Various stakeholders took part to the exercise, whose results informed the information architecture of the new platform.
Time to think about the core functionality: space discovery, evaluation, booking and booking management. Whiteboard brainstorming and user testing sessions helped create low and then high fidelity desktop and mobile wireframes.
After the wireframes were completed, I run a branding exercise in order to gain perspective on the perceived brand values and inject them into the UI. UI for every page was delivered along with a style guide and a design system.