UK Venue Booking Platform Share: datarockets Score Awaiting client review n/a Date Published 28 May 2020 Reading Time 4-Minute Read The datarockets team simplified the whole development process and maximized the convenience for the client’s team and their clients. Challenge WeFindVenues (WFV) is an online platform built to support clients with simply finding venues for their event. WFV was originally built in Ruby on Rails and required continuous changes, which has resulted in the partnership between WFV and datarockets. Datarockets has decided to take over further platform development and support. Starting with several minor features updates, bug fixing, and code refactoring, the platform itself did not appear to be such a challenge. However, after a short test iteration, the WFV team requested full support from datarockets including the major platform redesign. Approach Although datarockets began the project with the collaboration of Paul, WeFindVenues’ Managing Director who wasn’t experienced in working with developers, it didn’t present an obstacle. We set up our standard development process and tools on the project in order to assist Paul to monitor our real-time progress easily. The team took over major technical decisions, while Paul mainly focused on the product strategy. Even though the first iteration wasn’t problematic from a technical perspective, it was extremely significant from a relationship point of view. Datarockets has successfully fixed bugs and improved features that surpassed the 5-year-old platform’s “housework” demands. As a result, Paul and the WFV team were delighted having datarockets’ support, who could address problems as they occurred. Undoubtedly, with proven previous expertise, the datarockets team has accepted the next proposal from the WFV team to continue elevating the platform to greater changes. The UX redesign suggestion, then, was brought up to the major platform update, to maximize its productivity. The old design limitations had created difficulties for the user (usually the Event Manager) regarding the venue selection process. It required a long wait time and multiple steps for a user to determine the best venue, including inquiry form submission with a lack of given necessary information. To resolve this problem, datarockets used the given mockups aimed to improve user experience. While working on this implementation, we found a way to make the mockups even better. Open communication and team engagement resulted in accomplishing desired goals. A good example of how better decisions are made when speaking to users and between teammates is the new cost breakdown. Together with our client’s team, we figured out that users would trust the platform more if they were able to see how the final cost being calculated. We started to receive positive feedback right after its implementation. Our team ensured not just implement designs from given mockups but also did research and proposed our ideas on how to improve the things around. Such an approach resulted in small tweaks, which were extremely important from the UX perspective. Another good example of our approach is venue reservation options for Event Managers: Mockup version: Final version: However, a business can’t be able to measure the success of changes without tracking and analyzing actionable metrics. It was reported from Venue Managers regarding the failure of proposals creation, even though the system had been carefully tested and prepared for heavy loads. Indeed, after reviewing Google Analytics statistics, the datarockets team has discovered the problems which appeared to be with Internet Explorer. It occurred that some Internet Explorer users had experienced difficulties accessing the app. Datarockets therefore, reorganized the priorities to complete the bug fixing that was related to cross-browser usage, which allowed users to have access to valuable domains of the web application. The new business logic was successfully implemented, given by the new proposal design look as below: Results Although facing several challenges during the 2-month period processing WFV project updates, there have also been several significant improvements datarockets has achieved, including speed-up venue search and booking for users. Datarockets is proud of the success that the team has achieved, to simplify the whole development process and maximize the convenience for the WFV team and their clients. Tech Stack Ruby on Rails Postgresql Vue.js Google APIs Bootstrap Slim SCSS