cove's Work Orders dashboard set the tone: tabular data, a left rail of object types, status pills, a side-panel detail view. Reservations had to read as the same product, not a redesign.

cove ships native and web apps for the same product. This engagement was scoped to the desktop Web Dashboard. Mobile and native were not in the deliverable.

Nail one goal before generalizing: a two-hour meeting, about fifty attendees, within three weeks, user already signed in, no payment involved. That scenario drove every decision.

The building has six conference rooms, and the picker had to show all six at once, no pagination, no progressive disclosure, so the tenant could choose by availability rather than by name.

In a shared building an accidental booking blocks the room for another team. The flow had to end on a deliberate review, not a one-click submit.

cove's dashboard treats Work Orders as a top-level object alongside People, Guests, and Communication. Reservations belongs in that list, not under settings and not in a modal. Putting it in the rail matches the platform's existing model and makes the entry point obvious from anywhere.

The Reservations landing is deliberately small: a Create Reservation button and the tenant's upcoming bookings. No filter chrome, no menus. People come here to book a room, not to browse.

Picking a room is the first real decision. Rather than make the tenant open each room to check times, the picker shows all six as cards with the current week's availability on the surface. Which rooms are free Wednesday at two is answered without a click.

A narrow column beside the room grid shows the tenant's own next bookings. It removes the “did I already book this slot for the other meeting?” check that otherwise breaks the flow.

The high-fidelity build pairs the reservation form on the left with a two-month calendar on the right. Choosing an available slot fills the form in place. The tenant never has to hold a date in their head while scrolling.

Confirm is a review surface: title, time, location, attendees, room. The tenant either commits or goes back to the form. One-click create with no review was too risky where the wrong booking costs someone else two hours.

Started from the Work Orders dashboard and worked outward: the left-rail object types, the header pattern, the status-pill conventions, the side-panel detail view. Reservations had to live inside that grammar, so the audit set the constraints before any new pixels.

Six boxes on paper: Dashboard, Reservations, Room, Upcoming, Form, Confirm. The information architecture settled before the layout did, and the flow stayed at six steps for the whole engagement.

Took the work past the minimum. Landing, picker, the sidebar variant, form with calendar, and confirm were each designed end to end so the engagement showed a complete booking experience rather than one hero screen.

Form + Calendar was built to production spec: type, spacing, field rhythm, calendar density, the slot interaction. Craft is cheap to show on an empty landing page. It has to be earned on the busy one.

Same left-rail structure, same header strip, same paper-card surfaces, same density as the rest of the dashboard.

Delivered a walkthrough alongside the screens: the IA call, each surface's decision, the tie back to cove's product anchors, and the open items for a next cycle.