bilateral booking tool

The tradition of one on one meetings during major Forum events dates back to 1974 when participants had small pigeon holes at an event venue where interested parties could drop a message and arrange to meet. Such meetings laid the foundation for global collaboration and dialogue. This task can now only be done through the Forum’s digital platform. While a bilateral booking tool has existed in the past, it faced several difficulties with usability and was a major pain point in the participants experience. I was responsible for the overall redesign, user validation and implementation of the feature.

workflow

The biggest pain points of the previous version included not being intuitive (unable to perform the task through the calendar like most other meeting interfaces) and the complexity of Forum rules not surfaced in an appropriate way to the end user which led to confusion and general frustration. I started by streamlining the workflow for a simple and efficient interface that met the users objectives and reduced the reliance on support staff.

Final design

The final design was a major shift from the previous wizard experience and relooked at the entire calendar experience. It ensured that intricate Forum rules and situations were surfaced at the right time to the user in a clean interface. Simple interaction solutions such as error messages, progressive disclosure of information helped streamline this fragmented and complex workflow.

Screens from the final design.

usability studies

As part of trying to build a user-centred design culture, I was able to conduct usability studies to validate the new design before its development. The tests were highly successful and it was important to note that both kinds of users, i.e. someone who was familiar with the tool and also someone using the tool for the first time found the experience intuitive and were able to complete the tasks.

Design for the mobile app