I created two products for hair salons that can be utilized by other business categories as well, such as massage centers, beauty salons, and spa centers. The first is a 5-step booking system that is embedded in the company’s website, and the other is a SaaS tool that helps owners manage their business or businesses. People can easily book a service in a hair salon, and owners can manage their business efficiently.

Bookit was a side project. I collaborated with business owners during the ideation phase to gather information and specify their needs.

I noticed that in the Greek market, hair salons work in a very traditional way. Owners don't have a digital system to manage their business or group of companies. They even write their appointments on paper! They needed a system to help them organize and work more efficiently and to be relevant to the specific market. Also, appointments are closed only by phone call. If you are trying to reach out to a salon during a busy hour, you may find it difficult to book an appointment. So, there is a need for online booking that will reduce the stress of the reception and help users quickly book an appointment. Google has developed a booking service although it is very generic and salons don't prefer it.

Digital transformation to a sector that works in a very traditional way in Greece. Products that will help hair salons work efficiently, intelligently, and conveniently. That’s why I created bookit: a hair salon management and booking system.

I wanted to create a fast, simple, and easy-to-use booking system that can be used by anyone that is aged between 15-70. Below you can see the user flow (Happy path🤞🏻) and some mockups. UI was designed in order to support all branding differentiation of each business.

There are many qualitative and quantitative data that can be measured from the embedded system. The above will be captured when the user starts using the booking service.

To test my designs, I conducted usability testing. Five (5) users took part in the research, which had the following method:

Users had to complete a successful booking flow and book two services. All of the participants completed the task successfully, efficiently, and fast. Overall feedback was positive, with some comments regarding the information of every service.

Managing operational parts of a business can be challenging. Managing functional parts in a group of companies can be even more challenging. In Greece, many hair salon owners manage more than five salons without using digital software to help them. That's why they needed a system where they could see valuable data, and check their appointments, staff, orders, etc. The system is used by two different personas, business owner and store manager.

Business owner has the full overview of what is happening in every store.

Store manager has access to any info referring to the specific store.

Every user should understand and make use of the information mentioned in the platform. Especially business owners who might not be technically savvy should use the platform effortlessly.

It should make users feel they have full control of the hair salon stores at any time.

It contains only the essential information and actions that users have to take. It’s a platform that fulfills the needs of its user.

Nowadays, many products use the showcase of data to add value to the product as they offer knowledge to the end user. Although many business owners don’t know how to convert this knowledge into action thus, they tend to underestimate the value of this information. So through this project, I learned that it’s much more useful to offer automation through the knowledge that is generated from the data. For example, in this case, helpful automation would be to send the order list to the supplier directly when a specific number of items has been raised across the stores. Or it could suggest a weekly campaign based on the popularity of services.