Payroom - solution for short term booking

Business came with the first version of MVP which had low engagement by their end users. We needed to do research with existing customers and come up with a simple workflow that could cover critical user task flows, divide adaptive mobile versions and build a more complex web dashboard for next iterations.. 

The problem I was focusing as product designer was to define the main flow on a mobile version, find and collect inconsistencies, work on UI (first - to recollect all the existing Design in Figma, and then make Redesign with new style guidelines) and update the Roadmap with our tech team based on future changes and limited resources. 

We headed to research as we felt we were missing user-perspective for the product. As the business already started to use Payroom for its purpose, we had the opportunity to talk to End users and Business as well about how we can remake MVP and then define next critical roadmap iterations. 

At the very beginning, we defined with business owners critical functionality for the app within User Journey and manual work that was done eventually as a part of operations processes. For example, business had direct communication channels with clients through social media or chat, made bookings on request, added manually booking time to the Google calendar.

What we did first - integrate MVP to Google calendars, so the bookings were automatically filled and not conflicting manual bookings, connected to smart locks that were set up at the space, and started testing it with real users. 

Then we had long product testing interviews, where we spoke to psychotherapists who book the hours in the space via Payroom, so we could elaborate how they felt about the functionality that already was there. 

I structured all notes and data from End users into Affinity mapping  and considered the business owner's vision for the roadmap. In that way we had a broad and expanded product we needed to build. 

We decided to conduct interviews to have deep insights about psychotherapists schedule, preference about bookings, habits and patterns. We believed that only during interview we could get that data.

We already knew that the focus of this stage was to cover main customer journey steps through the booking process built in specialists schedule.

• To confirm focus on our main audience - psychotherapists and coaches
• How people seek space for rent, why and what for?
• How do they make decisions and what are the main pain points during that?
• What is their preferred form of communication?
• Would they use such a service even if they have more experience with direct communication to business?

• Psychologists seek a constant place for rent with flexible time options.
• Psychologists schedules could vary from a few hours per week to few days in a physical space.
• Psychologists would be open to trying to automise their way of booking spaces.
• They still will need additional comfort communication channels.

We conducted 7 interviews with psychologists during 2 weeks. I was the person who planed the interview scripts and talked to psychotherapists.

Have individual practice, looking for free spaces to work, value clear communication and tools that shortened the time for booking

They are looking for more flexible options to book hourly rent as they have major part of their clients who work online.

Some specialists know they need fixed number of hours for work during week.

Also, specialists who just starting their journey (1-2 years of experience) still looking for ideal capacity of rent hours and work online.

Psychotherapists are more open to have automised way of getting into space (smart lock i.e)

They prefer to know what schedule is open for booking without checking in through communication.

Clair works as psychoanalysis therapist for more than 5 years. Sometimes it could be long hours.  Clair prefer and insist with their clients to work in a physical space as the process of therapy would work better for them. 

Clair tends to build sustainable schedule for a few days per week for working in rental space and other days could be worked from home as she has online sessions. She is concerned with food waste problem, also she wants to teach her kids live more sustainable life.

To build comfortable schedule with clients;

To have control over renting space for hours she needs to book;

To have quick access to open hours and her schedule within the space.

Sometimes clients don't respond in time and place is already booked.

Got frustrated when can't see open schedule for booking in a place that I want to rent for my practice. 

Feel overwhelmed when need to handle in memory spaces that I booked, code doors and other details.

This is still our main focus as User should book hours seamlessly.  It should be quick, without interruptions to other functionality.

This was also our focus from the start as our booking system should be connected to smart locks so User could automatically get the information how to enter the space after booking.

As for now we are focusing on PWA, it means we won't have for now nav tab as in the mobile app and User should have easy access always get back to My bookings page.

Users want to be flexible with cancelation and reservation (for 1 hour) features

This project has huuge potential to grow into platform for:

1) business who sub-renting their places (beauty, tech coworking, psychotherapy rooms, wellness) and want to easy manage their capacity between different clients 

2) nomads, solo-preneurs, specialists freelancers, who need to rent for sort time period or on regular period and also manage their clients+schedule.

Our team believes that right design, tech stack and market positioning could lead Payroom to product market fit. 

We've worked on product roadmap: 

1. Admin panel:
            Bookings management
                Users management (origin, place of contact: instagram, fb etc)
                        labels
                        frequency status (1 month update)
                Analytics  + goal tracker
 2. Payroom landing page + redesign
 3. Generative instance creation
                Brand / subdomain related structure
 4. Properties / rooms setup and management:
                 With “how to videos” feature
 5. CMS integration
 6. Payroom search platform
 7. Payments integration setup (PayPal / stripe)