The challenge
Salons, beauty and medical spas, studios and gyms use software from Millennium Systems International (MSI) to manage business records, scheduling, point of sale transactions, and track business and marketing goals. MSI was already an industy leader when we met so the stakes were high when they asked me and my team to redesign their flagship business management software suite from the ground up.
What they had
The platform's ancient user interface had become so unwieldy and cumbersome to understand, maintain and run, that it was beginning to have a negative impact on both sales effectivness and support costs.
The CEO wrote the existing product himself in Visual FoxPro, a dead language, and their customers often called it "popup hell." New customer expectations like modern user interface design, touch device compatibility and cloud-based services meant it was time for a change.
The big idea
One of the most challenging, complex parts of the spa/salon back office is the appointment calendar. Early ideation in this area led to one of the platform's most distinctive competitive advantages: fuzzy logic and natural language processing.
I went through several rounds of interaction design to come up with a way to let people to type, text, or talk in a natural, conversational manner and the scheduler will "just get it." We recognized that we had just invented a new concept: conversational booking. The client, immediately recognizing the power of this invention, patented it, securing their competitive advantage. They even trademarked the name I came up with: "ConvoBar."
Understanding the client's clients
Designing for salons and spas is an interesting challenge because of the diversity of the user base. Primary user research revealed stark persona segmentations along generational gaps. For example: millennial users are far more comfortable with text entry, expecially speech-to-text, than older users who prefer to click through menus with a mouse. We soon began using the labels "Texter" and "Clicker" to help ensure that we created a system that addressed the needs of both.
Redesigned interactions
Powered by a killer idea, the rest of the process of redesigning the product was a matter of applying my experience with UX best practices across the entire functional suite: booking, point of sale, client management, employee management, goal tracking, marketing, reporting, inventory management, and more.
Developing a modern look and feel
We went through several rounds of iteration to land on the right design language, producing several sets of moodboards and style compositions.
The look we landed on is nothing less than gorgeous – a bold, typography-forward style that defined the brand image for the new generation.
The result
The redesigned product was nothing short of a smash success, earning 40 industry awards since launch, including American Spa Magazine's highest honor eight years in a row: the Professional's Choice Award for Best Software. Since launch, MSI ported the platform to a new technology stack to deploy to a wider variety of devices, but they kept the same game-changing user experience that catapaulted them into the forefront of the industry .
