Details

Client

Park Lane

Role

UX Design, UI Design

Year

2019

Summary

I designed a Customer and a Staff App for one of the most popular night clubs in Gothenburg (Sweden).

Park Lane Club wanted to develop an app that would let its users apply for (VIP) lists and book tables.

This project was a close collaboration with SharpMind Digital Agency; I led the UX processes and designed all the UI. We tested and demoed the app weekly with the customer and tested continuously with the target audience during the design and development phases.

Problem

With too many guests using a lot of different platforms (sending text messages (SMS), FB group posts, FB messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, email, etc.) and asking to be put on the list, also the event promoters managing and submitting their own lists, it has become unmanageable to handle all the list applications, plus there's also a lack of an overview and control with the handling of the lists in the current way of working.

Solution

An easy-to-use app enables guests to see the upcoming events and apply for the list and/or book tables at the venue. Users can add (up to 5) friends to their applications and are notified via push-notifications when they change status. The lists than are centralized and are available for the promoters, managers, and bouncers through the Staff App and an Admin Dashboard.

Research methods

Information Architecture

Market research

Prototype testing

Persona

Design elements

This was not supposed to be a branding project, but there was no brand style guide that I could use for this app. All that the customer could deliver was a logo. When asked for a style guide, we were told "black background like the website, "... so I quickly put together a color scheme based on the colors in the pictures on their website and suggested to use a native font stack for the apps; for best legibility and more native experience for the apps.

After customer approval, we went ahead and used the following design elements in the app. The customer (against our advice) chose to change the font a couple of days before the launch.

Brand Colors

System Colors

Gray Scale

Typography

Icon Set

User flow

Visuals

List of upcoming events. There are usually 3 events each weekend, and those are displayed on top.

Event details and call to actions. The guest can book a table (secondary action) and/or apply to get on the list (primary action).

While applying for the list, guests can also invite their friends to be on the list with them. This way, the user is added on the list with "Name + X."

When the club managers approve (or denies) the guest to be on the list, a notification is sent to the user(s) confirming their status and terms.

The outcome

It's important to remember that apps like this one are never the actual product; they're the means and tools to improve the overall customer experience.

Our users are predominantly young people on the go. They're using their smartphones for pretty much everything, so having an app for list-sign-up is a low hanging fruit. But we also know that they're constantly distracted by all the other apps (such as social media), and there's no need or want to compete with all those.

They are not expected to spend more than a few minutes at a time with the Park Lane Club App. The goal is to
1. See the upcoming events 
2. Apply for the list  (and maybe book a table)
3. and Get Notified when status changes
- that's all. There is no need for gamification, endless scrolls, image galleries, or any other fancy stuff - just simple and straightforward functionality with a UI appropriate for the target audience and the brand.

We suggested a "membership card" functionality, which makes sense given the context. That would save the club the need for manufacturing plastic cards, but they preferred the actual cards and said that it's part of their branding strategy.

In the end, the customer was satisfied, and we felt like we delivered something more than a good enough solution and something we could be proud of.

Learnings

Technology

We chose to develop the app with React Native instead of the native development languages for iOS and Android, which saved us time and made it easier to manage the apps' source code. Although there were some limitations regarding custom UI elements, transitions, and animations, the results were very satisfying. It was also fun and interesting to work with push notifications and see how the users interact with the app(s).

Customer

Having an "analog" customer can sometimes be challenging; the lack of knowledge (about design and development processes), almost non-existing specifications, and no understanding about how much last-minute changes and requests can actually impact the product development process (not to mention deadlines and budgets), made this project a little tricky. But for us, customer satisfaction and delivering value was more important than deadlines and budgets.

Project Management

There weren't any requirements specifications for this project initially; It all started with customers saying, "Can you develop an app for our guests to sign up for lists before June?". And the budget and deadline were fixed. So we had practically no time for deeper research or planning before we kicked-off.

All the details were left for us to figure out while we were developing the app. Not to mention new feature requests dropping in every week, so that we had to adapt and redo some of the parts we thought we were done with.

Saying yes to everything customer asks for might be great for sales, but it's quite bad for project management and would be a nightmare for a product owner (which we didn't have).

Processes & Best Practices

With a tight budget and short deadline projects like this one, it's unavoidable to compromise and take shortcuts. And sometimes, it's okay - product development is an iterative process; you can revisit those steps later on and fix issues if you spot any. Done is better than perfect. You'd fill the knowledge gaps with insights and data and improve continuously... However, this turned out to be a one-off project, and I feel that we could have done more extensive research and user-testings.