Turning a cluttered platform into a clear daily tool

Immersion with the Client

When I joined the project, the existing platform was cluttered and confusing. It lacked visual hierarchy, had inconsistent layouts, and buried essential actions, which made everyday tasks frustrating for staff. To fully understand these pain points, I visited the salon and observed how employees used the system in real time.

I conducted direct conversations with staff members, capturing how their technical comfort levels affected the way they navigated the platform. This hands-on approach gave me a grounded understanding of the day-to-day struggles they faced.

Identifying Pain Points

Through these sessions, I mapped recurring usability obstacles such as:

• Inconsistent navigation – staff often got lost when moving between views.
• Lack of hierarchy – important actions like booking appointments or managing vouchers were hard to locate.
• Visual confusion – limited spacing and uniform layouts made interpreting schedules difficult.

These insights clarified the redesign priorities: establish a clear information hierarchy, simplify navigation, and design with workflow efficiency at the core.

Working Within Constraints

The redesign needed to move fast. The salon relied on the tool daily, so downtime or long iteration cycles weren't possible. To deliver quickly, I worked in close sync with the developer and maintained frequent check-ins with the client to validate direction before investing time in refinements.

Core Pages

The redesign touched every page of the Luna Day Spa platform, ensuring a consistent, intuitive experience across the system. While the platform also had a mobile version, the focus of the redesign was on the web interface, as requested by the client. On mobile, only the calendar was actively used, so improvements there were kept lightweight and practical.

Two areas received the most attention because they were essential to the daily workflow:

• Calendar – completely restructured with colour coding, clearer spacing, and simplified navigation, enabling staff to manage multiple appointments with ease.
• Client Page – redesigned to make client information and history easier to access, helping staff provide a smoother customer experience.

I fully reworked the process of creating an appointment, which previously involved many disjointed steps. This allowed staff to handle complex scheduling scenarios quickly and without confusion.

Auxiliary Sections

In addition to the core workflows, I redesigned the supporting pages to ensure they matched the same clarity and usability standards:

• Client list – searchable and better structured.
• Voucher list – easier to track and redeem.
• Reports – day and month summaries made more accessible for quick overview.
• Administration – tools for managing therapists, their schedules, and other operational details.

Together, these changes created a coherent and user-friendly platform that aligned closely with the studio's real daily needs.

Ongoing Client & Staff Feedback

Testing was continuous: every design iteration was reviewed directly by salon staff in their real working environment. Their feedback highlighted practical needs (faster access to certain functions) and allowed us to fine-tune flows immediately.

Navigating Client Requests

The client often requested very specific changes, sometimes based on personal preferences rather than usability. In some cases, we implemented these ideas only for the client to later ask that they be reverted.

Knowing the type of client we were working with, I learned to approach each request critically. When a change risked adding complexity instead of clarity, I explained the trade-offs and then demonstrated why an alternative design would be more effective and easier for the staff to use. This back-and-forth helped maintain a balance between accommodating client input and protecting the overall usability of the platform.