Web and mobile responsive designs for an online booking platform for making hotel reservations by foreigners/tourists. This was the initial version of the system with limited set of features, prioritised through discussions with the core development team

How did I approach the project?

Initially, had a kickoff meeting with the team to discuss the problem that the team is trying to solve, scope and other constraints. As this was a freelance based project, it was my responsibility to clearly define the process, project deliverables, goals and understand the domain. Of course, yes negotiation skills also comes into play when prioritising features :D

When designing for the hotel reservation systems, there are currently two types of systems such as “Booking Engine” and “Online booking platform”. The project which I worked on was for an online booking platform, where there will be a separate admin to allow hotels to add details about their information and booking reservation details.

As this was a fast-phase project, did not have enough resources to conduct interviews or surveys when defining the problem. However, analysed competitor platforms, created moodboards, drafted flows in paper and created low-fidelity wireframes in Whimsical.

Through the analysis phase, the gaps we identified mainly apart from usability was that, the tourists are unaware of the best locations/areas to travel and hence needed advice from experts when booking. The options that was left for them was either to “Google”, check with a travel agency, read articles or sought help from friends who have visited previously.😕

Hence, one of the end goals was to encourage foreigners/tourists to plan out their whole vacation whether it is North to South or East to West and make it a memorable experience to our paradise. ✈️

In addition, most of our Sri Lankan authentic brands are limited to the island, 🇱🇰 but why limit ourselves when we can reach the pinnacle of global markets beyond the waters of the Indian Ocean? 🥰 So, when designing the experience for the travellers/business class professionals/other tourists we thought of how we can promote these authentic Sri Lankan brands to our tourists.🇱🇰 If a marketer/business development professional is reading this article, I would say we can call it cross-selling, yah?

Thereby, after the initial research phase, had frequent syncup meetings to ensure that designs are aligned with strategy as well as it meets the defined constraints. As a designer, we need to empathise with our client too, so yes this is where prioritising of features come into play.

After finalising the wireframes converted them to high-fidelity UI designs using Figma and created a simple design system for scalability and future purposes.

I worked in the initial phase of the project which ran for around a month and had to juggle the time with other work. This project as well as advice from mentors in Clubhouse sessions and from my fellow designer friends (Kushanthi, Prabhani and few more) helped me to improve my process for external projects, improve my negotiation, estimation and time management skills.

Lastly, I humbly appreciate for reaching out and giving me the opportunity to work on this exciting project and wish that “Brands of Ceylon” will be able to create opportunities for Sri Lankan brands and bring them to the international community.

With the small break that I had in my career, I’m looking for opportunities to strive to improve the user experience, not just the design of an user interface but from a product designer’s mind.😇

References:

1. 2017. SURVEY OF DEPARTING FOREIGN TOURISTS FROM SRI LANKA 2017. 1st ed. [ebook] Colombo: Research & Internati onal Relati ons Division Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Available at: <https://sltda.gov.lk/storage/common_media/AirportSurveyReport2017_464182481.pdf> [Accessed 28 October 2021].

2. Quora.com. 2021. Quora. [online] Available at: <https://www.quora.com/search?q=place%20to%20visit%20sri%20lanka> [Accessed 28 October 2021].