Communication in large offices is a challenge, and booking some space to run a meeting or have a private call shouldn't be difficult. This exercise is to design a user interface on a tablet to let someone know whether a meeting room is free, for how long, and to allow the person to book on the spot if necessary.
This application is intended for use by anybody who might need a meeting room in a large office. You should consider that the people requiring the room may or may not need it urgently, there may already be people in the room, they might only need it for 10-15 minutes, and that there are at least 10 meeting rooms in the building.
Requested features
A way to see the availability or unavailability of the room.
Booking the room with some context around what that room is.
Availability of other rooms on the premises.
Users
I chose to focus on corporate managers in large office buildings. My assumption is that they would get a lot of utility out of this tool. They frequently need to schedule meetings for their team. They also have to deal with potential scheduling conflicts.
Context
Users will be accessing the application on a tablet mounted to the wall during office hours. The app is mobile and supports access from a variety of devices.
User research
The objective would be to learn how corporate managers in large offices currently book rooms and schedule meetings in order to determine what is most important to them. I would consider JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) style user interviews as a method for learning how users currently book rooms and schedule meetings. The JTBD framework teaches that users “hire” products and/or processes to perform a “job”.
JTBD questions:
What kinds of solutions have you tried? What has and hasn’t worked for each?
Have you gotten input from anyone else? Is there anyone else’s needs that you have to consider?
Did you have any anxieties or doubts about your current solution?
Competitive research
Conducting user interviews was outside of the scope of this project. I decided to use competitive research instead. In doing so I was able to get ideas for what is likely to be important to users. In particular, I found features that are commonly found in similar software solutions. They include:
Multi-location
Internal meetings
Online booking
Visitor management
1, 2-9, 10-49, 50 - 99, 100 - 499, 500 - 999, 1000+ users
Web-based
Book a room anywhere
Collision management
Real-time scheduling
Status boards
Conference room displays
Everything in one calendar
On the spot booking
Tasks
I created a list of tasks that the software should be able to perform based upon the above considerations. This helps me to consider what the key interfaces may be.
Book urgent meetings
Book recurring meetings
Schedule international meetings
Book meetings for any group size
See room status
Reschedule meetings
Book meetings for visitors
Choose room: size, accessibility, room type
Suggest meeting slots
Show conflicts
Workflow integrations
Warn when time allotment is almost up
Schedule remote meetings
Schedule meetings at room
Ideation
Thinking about how the key interfaces might look helps me set a framework for useful iteration. This is useful to do for creating more specific user journeys.
User journeys
Wireframes
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Testing
Different types of tests can be run depending on available resources. My goal would be to determine how quickly a user can book a room with this software. I would also want to find out how well the design fits the users’ needs.
Types
In-person interviews with a prototype.
Use a service to test users online.
Event tracking.
Metrics
Task success rate.
Task completion time.
Conversion.
