Operations software for coworking spaces

My role

BOSS was a business operating system for workspaces, built by REinvent, a property-tech startup. Work started in July 2020 and it was ready to launch in Singapore in December 2021.

What I did:

Designed the feature-specific components, such as the workflow builder, dashboards and floor-plan editor, where complex business rules had to stay simple to use.
Defined the layout system: baseline page structures, grids and responsive rules for every layout type.
Built the design system shared by nine modules, and kept it in sync with the engineering component library.
Broke down complex, unclear problems on tight timelines, and helped the team find simple solutions.
Reviewed and mentored the designers on the team, with clear feedback on the “why”.

Project background

BOSS (Business Operating System for Space) brought workspace operations into one place: tenant lifecycles, sales, billing and flexible and hybrid workspace management, for landlords and operators.

As hybrid work took off during the pandemic, landlords and operators had to run flexible space with tools built for fixed leases. BOSS aimed to help them give tenants a better experience, keep them longer and run the business with fewer manual steps. The full feature scope is shown above.

Key product offerings

Modules combine depending on who uses them. Flex Operate covers the whole customer journey, from leads and contract approval to tenant engagement. Engage helps operators build experiences that keep tenants coming back.

Product slide for BOSS Flex Operate with floor plan screens and feature checklist — Flex Operate: manage leads, contracts, billing and floor plans in one place

Product slide for BOSS Tenant Engage with room booking screens and feature checklist — Tenant Engage: a branded app for tenants to book rooms and request services

Product slide for BOSS Employee Engage showing three branded phone apps and feature checklist — Employee Engage: white-label workplace app that carries each company's branding

Target customers

BOSS served every type of building stakeholder:

Persona card for landlords wanting to increase profit and manage properties with data — Landlords: want better returns and clearer data on their buildings

Persona card for space operators wanting efficient workplaces and engaged tenants — Space operators: want to run buildings efficiently and keep tenants happy

Persona card for tenants wanting technology enhanced and flexible workspaces — Tenants: want a flexible, tech-enabled workspace with real-time answers

How I worked

Same rhythm as Switch: two-week sprints in squads with product and engineering. For each feature, study 3–5 competitors from different markets, sketch layout and flow, detail it with the design system, then refine it with the team.

What I designed

BOSS was big: a web portal with nine core modules (dashboards, sales, space inventory, community, engagement, billing and payments, IT resources, tasks and settings), each with 2–8 key features and 10–40 screens or component variations per feature. A companion app covered community and engagement, with more than ten features: announcements, news, room and event-space booking, service requests, door unlock, invoices and payment, perks, events, member connect, membership and profile.

Data flowed between modules to automate the work, so designing well meant understanding the business logic as deeply as the product managers did.

Highlights

Designs for the app, web portal and website, with a focus on usability, simplicity and consistency.
Baseline layouts, grids and responsive rules for every page type.
Design system: shared basics (inputs, selectors, dropdowns, tables, date and time pickers, pagination) plus feature-specific components such as the workflow builder, dashboards and floor-plan editor.
Component libraries kept in sync with engineering.