An app for booking flexible workspaces

My role

Switch was a workspace-on-demand app built by REinvent, a property-tech startup. I joined as the first designer in July 2020, and the app launched in Singapore three months later, in October 2020. Switch has since been discontinued.

What I did:

Designed the core journeys: finding a space, QR-code check-in and check-out with protection against misuse, and self-serve sign-up for companies.
Set up the information architecture and interaction patterns across the app, WeChat mini-program, web portals and website, and the design system they share.
Led the research: heavy-user interviews, a survey and usability tests, and took the findings into product decisions such as the homepage redesign.
Shaped features with product and engineering, and found design answers to constraints that came up during development.
Reviewed and mentored the designers who joined as the team grew to five.

Project background

Switch was “Airbnb for workspaces”: one app to find and use a desk, booth or room nearby, from many different providers.

Key selling points

COVID pushed people out of fixed offices, and home did not always work. Switch bet on paying for access rather than ownership, the way Netflix or Uber do: walk in and pay by the minute, or book ahead.

What Switch offered

Switch connected people with spaces from many providers: its own Switch booths, malls, co-working spaces, offices, hotels and residential buildings. People could search by location, distance, price, amenities, workspace type and how they wanted to pay. That last choice, pay-per-minute walk-in or a booking, was the heart of the product.

Workspace types on Switch:

Target users

From interviews and the survey, three things separated our users: where they could work today, how they worked, and how often they needed somewhere else to work. These became our two primary personas:

Persona card for Jeremy, an entrepreneur, with his quote, needs and pain points — Persona 1: a self-employed entrepreneur who needs affordable, well-connected workspaces on the go

Persona card for Kenneth, a project manager, with his quote, needs and pain points — Persona 2: an office worker on hybrid schedule who wants a quiet, private place near home

How I worked

We worked in two-week sprints in squads with product managers and engineers. For each feature:

Look outward: study how 3–5 other products, online and offline, handle the same problem, to borrow what works and avoid known mistakes.
Design: sketch the layout and flow, then detail it with design-system components, adding new ones only when the feature really needed them.
Deliver and iterate: walk the team through the design, then refine it with their feedback.

Wireframe flow with annotations for walk-in journey, booking journey and special case handling — Booking flow B: walk-in and booking journeys mapped side by side with edge cases

Wireframe flow with annotations for choosing time slots, with rules and two worked examples — Flow A: time-slot selection rules with worked examples for meeting rooms and event spaces

Research and data

Over 18 months we ran three main studies and tracked key metrics throughout.

Heavy-user interviews (10 people): users with 6+ months on Switch, 10+ stays and an order in the last 30 days. Goal: test the value proposition, build personas and understand how people decided where to work.
Survey (157 responses): demographics, reasons for using Switch, length of stay and NPS. It fed feature planning and the personas.

Table listing user needs grouped by pricing, booth, space, app and customer service with user counts — User requirements ranked by how many users raised each need, led by price and booth comfort

Competitor overview table comparing markets, workspace types, user segments and value propositions — Competitor research: most rivals position as flexible or on-demand workspace platforms

Table of ten interviewees with age, occupation, visit counts, spend and user segment — Interview panel mixing heavy users, low-use users and a business-account user

Usability tests: two tasks covering the key journeys, with six internal team members. What we found shaped the homepage redesign.
Competitor analysis: 14 similar products from different markets, compared on value proposition, audience, business model and design.
Metrics: GTV, monthly active users, installs, app opens, registrations, stays and usage.

Line chart of daily active app users with a peak above one thousand, plus app install and device charts — Metrics dashboard: app active users, installs and first downloads by phone type

Dashboard card showing 63 new paid stayers up 26 percent, and a chart of first paid order types — Tracking new paying customers and which space type they booked first

Chart of daily active users over time and a chart of daily app opens by app version — Usage over a year, including how quickly users moved to each new app version

What I designed

Switch was a small ecosystem. The mobile app sat at the centre; web portals ran the operations behind it and received usage and feedback data; the website brought new users in.

A shared brand guideline set colour and type, and each product had its own design system for the UI that was unique to it. We also created a product writing guide so on-screen copy stayed consistent.

Highlights

Cross-platform design for the app, WeChat mini-program, web portals and website.
Core journeys: QR check-in and check-out that prevents misuse, self-serve company sign-up, and a feedback channel that needed very little staff time.
Design systems: shared basics (inputs, selectors, dropdowns, tables, date and time pickers, pagination) plus elements reused across platforms.
Component libraries kept in sync with engineering.

Screens

App design:

Web portal design:

Switch for Business Portal login page with email and password fields and an office illustration — Business portal log-in screen for company customers

Enterprise portal table of spaces with desk, booth and meeting room counts and publish status — Space list where a business manages and publishes its workspaces

Admin portal district details page with a Shanghai district map and list of locations — Admin view for setting up districts and locations on a map

Overview dashboard with usage and cost figures and a table of usage by location — Usage dashboard showing cost, stays and time saved for a company

Edit payment form with billing information, billing contact and credit card sections — Billing form where companies manage payment and contact details

Manage bookings timeline showing desks booked across the day from 7am to 11pm — Space partner calendar of bookings by hour for each desk

Edit booking dialog over the timeline with client name, note and a time range slider — Editing a booking by dragging its time range on the same timeline

Some early UX design examples:

Annotated wireframe flow for checking in with a QR code and returning to an ongoing visit — Check-in flow: scan a QR code, unlock the door, then track the visit

Annotated wireframe flow covering check-in errors such as poor connection and unpaid visits — Error cases for check-in, from no network to an unpaid earlier visit

Annotated wireframe flow for browsing and refreshing the home list of workspaces — Home screen flow: browsing nearby listings with sticky notices and filters

Annotated wireframe flow for checking out, confirming the visit and paying — Check-out flow: scan or remote check-out, then confirm and pay

Annotated wireframe flow for sorting and filtering listings by distance, space type and district — Sort and filter flow so users can narrow down nearby spaces

Annotated wireframe flow for the listing detail page with photos, hours, amenities and directions — Listing detail page: photos, opening hours, amenities and how to get there

Tool used: Figma
Work done @ REinvent / 2020–2022

Product Design @ REinventJenny LeeMarch 9, 20222020–2022