Booking Calendar Redesign

Role

  • Full ownership of the user experience and interface design

  • Close collaboration with Product and Engineering partners

Situation

Current business logic for booking time in their second home left some owners unable to stay in their Pacaso during most desirable times of the year

Calendar UI was difficult to understand and had a number of severe accessibility issues

Figure 1-2: Difficult to distinguish colored dots represent booked, unavailable, and special dates. Grayed out and crossed out dates are unavailable to book, either due to rules or because they are already booked.

Tasks

  • Make owners aware and engaged with Peak Season scheduling

  • Help owners intuitively understand the difference between Peak and non-Peak dates

  • Keep owners informed about duration of and rules for Peak Season booking

  • Communicate Peak Season booking deadlines

  • Improve visual communication for special/custom dates and booked stays

  • Onboard Oscars onto the new experience and UI changes

  • Ensure readability and accessibility

Actions

Changes were built into both the user-facing app experiences and the business logic, enabling owners to book peak season stays in a more equitable way.

Introduced Peak Season treatments that clearly differentiated them from non-peak times

Figure 3: Winter, Summer, and the initial Welcome peak periods are represented with illustrations and color-coded backgrounds.

Improved readability, accessibility, and comprehension of how holidays, custom events, deadlines, booked and unavailable dates appeared on the calendar

Figure 4-5: Clear and accessible treatments applied to various date categories in light and dark mode.

Designed the first time experience screens to introduce owners to the new features

Figure 6-8: Screens presented the first time the app is opened after the update, as well as the Help screen accessible from anywhere in the new Booking tab.

Results

  • Pacaso owners were aware of and understood the changes to their booking experience

  • Owners understood the difference between Peak and non-Peak dates

  • Owners understood Peak Season booking rules and how to they affected them

  • Significantly improved visual representation of special/custom dates and booked stays

  • Readability and accessibility addressed to meet standards

  • Qualtrics survey showed overall owner satisfaction with the app up by 20%