Role
Sole Designer
Product Thinking, Visual Design, Interaction Design
Timeline
June - October 2024
Team
1 Product Manager
1 Engineer
As the first designer on the team, I led multiple design initiatives of multiple projects, including the core tattoo booking experience. In this project, my responsibility is to enhance and elevate the current tattoo booking flow in Inkflow. Therefore, my process involved analyzing current solution, synthesizing research, wireframing and prototyping, as well as validating solutions.
Context
What is Inkflow?
Inkflow is an early-stage startup with a mission to help tattoo artists manage their administrative tasks by combining their booking forms, scheduling, deposits, and conversations with clients all in one place.
Problem
Scheduling appointments with artists can take 3-5 days, often requiring manual coordination of availabilities and deposit confirmations—distracting artists from more essential tasks, like designing tattoos.
Solution
Minimize back and forth interactions with Inkflow
With Inkflow, artists can save time with a tailored booking form, automated scheduling, and a streamlined deposit feature all in one place.
Customizable Booking Form
Send quote and schedule
appointment at the same time
Clients schedule and sends
a deposit all at once
Impact 🌟
The customizable booking form and client scheduling flow have been shipped. Since then we've:
1
Launched the tattoo booking experience for 50 tattoo artists
2
Reduced total scheduling time for artists by 50%
3
Built a scalable design system for Inkflow
Disclaimer: When I joined Inkflow, the product had already gone through research and discovery and created an MVP. The research that I’m discussing below is to provide context on what requirements I gathered from the team to drive the design decisions made.
Research and Discovery
What are the issues with booking tattoo appointments?
10 user interviews were conducted to understand the problem space and pain points for tattoo artists. Below are the key findings
Too much back and forth happens during inquiry
Artists need sufficient information about a client's tattoo before providing a quote. Inquiries typically come through Instagram DMs, leading to a lot of back-and-forth communication to gather all the necessary details.
Scheduling is manual work and becomes tedious
Artist would have to manually check their calendar for empty slots , and then propose potential appointment times to clients through email or instagram DMs.
Deposit becomes bottlenecks to schedule appointments
To prevent no-shows, artists require deposits to confirm appointments. However, following up on deposits and confirming receipt can be tedious and therefore slowing down the scheduling process.
Overall, we see that the back and forth communication and manual work takes a lot of time away from artists to focus on their tattoo work.
Design prompt
Turning Insights into Goals
Based on the research and insights we’ve uncovered, I wanted to outline goals that would help us guide decision decisions throughout the project.
1
Minimize back and forth interaction between clients and artists during inquiry
2
Reduce the time it takes to schedule an appointment
The Tattoo Booking Experience
Below is the outline of what a typical tattoo booking experience would look like without Inkflow.
Many of the back and forth interaction happens when client is inquiring for a tattoo and when they are coordinating an appointment time.
What has already been built
Based on our research and discovery, the following user flow has been developed by Inkflow. The team has created an MVP featuring a basic booking form, quote submission, and scheduling functionality. My role is focused on enhancing the user experience through refined visual and interaction design.
Competitive Analysis
When brainstorming design ideas and solutions, I analyzed other existing products that have similar user needs and design patterns such as Calendly, Fresha, and HeyGoldie
Design and Iterations
Key Design Decisions
Inquiry Form
Provide Artists with Template Questions
Predefine questions for artists when creating booking form
We discovered during our research that artists generally have similar questions that they include in their inquiry form. With Inkflow, clients will be able to create a customizable booking form fit to their needs. We decided to provide them with template questions to save time in creating their booking form.
Artist sends quote and scheduling times
Choosing Date & Time
When sending quote and scheduling times, an important step for artist is to choose how their clients is going to schedule an appointment with them. There are 2 different ways to schedule:
1/ Client chooses a date from a calendar
2/ Artist proposes multiple dates and time for clients to choose from
I explored two different ways of presenting the options
Explorations on choosing date & time
01/ Implicit Decision
Propose times is highlighted
Visually unclear what scheduling type is selected
Unclear on how users will revert to client choosing a date once a propose time is selected.
Client choosing a date on calendar is the default
0/2 Explicit Decision
2 distinct options
Client will choose a date on a calendar is the default
Visually unclear what scheduling type is selected
During the project, we discovered that users were using the 'propose times' option to select a single date that had already been agreed upon by both the artist and client. This left the client with only one option to confirm the appointment.
To simplify the experience for both the client and artist, we introduced a third option where the artist could select a single date and time. This approach led us to adopt the 'explicit decision' option, as it was more scalable and could be applied to cases with more than two options.
Chosen option for date and time
Client Books an Appointment with Deposit
Selecting a Date and Time
Depending on what the artist chooses, clients will have a different experience in how they choose their time and date.
1/ Client Chooses Time from Calendar
When client chooses a time, they will see a high level monthly view. When dates are selected, the times will appear below it -- client chooses date and time all in one page. This design allows clients to freely browse between dates to see which slot works best for them.
2/ Artist Proposes Times
Client will see a time slot view of all the date and times that artist has proposed. If the options provided does not work, client will be able to message the artist and ask for more times. This view uses the same pattern as when client chooses from the calendar with the monthly view removed.
3/ Artists Selects Exact Date and Time
Initially, we wanted to use the same pattern as the proposed times, but I decided that we should reduce the amount of friction and time it takes to get clients to send a deposit and schedule an appointment. Displaying the date upfront will allow the user to quickly confirm and schedule their appointment.
Final Designs
Goal 1: Minimize back and forth interaction
1/ Customizable Booking Form
Artists can create a simple yet customizable booking form tailored to what they need in order to quote the client.
Artist: Customizeable Booking Form
Client: Submits Inquiry Through
Booking Form
Goal 1: Minimize back and forth interaction + Goal 2: Reduce time it takes to schedule appointment
2/ Send Quote and Scheduling Options
Artists review inquiry details to determine whether to accept the request. Once accepted, they can send a quote along with their preferred scheduling methods.
Goal 2: Reduce time it takes to schedule appointment
3/ Client Books an Appointment with Deposit
Clients will view the quote sent from the artist and will be able to schedule an appointment with the artist right away. To secure the appointment, client will need to pay for a deposit -- streamlining the deposit payment process.
Next Steps
Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to conduct formal user testing for the client facing designs to fully validate my results. I relied heavily getting feedback from the PM as well as guerilla testings. The overall feedback was generally positive and gave me direction to make design refinements.
We also planned to add more functionalities to these features. We wanted to get the core functionalities of the product out first.
Learnings
1/ Embracing the constraints
Working at an early-stage startup, I faced many constraints, particularly when it comes to time and resources. I had to design and enhance the entire user experience within 3 months with limited access to users. If I had more time, I would have spent more time brainstorming ideas and quickly validate them at an earlier stage.
2/ Building a design system
I've never experienced having to build out a design system from scratch for an entire product. I learned a lot from researching and analyzing different design systems in the industry to figure out what worked best for the product. I had also learn edthat creating a design system in itself is an iterative process that I will need to be aware of continuously.