Favur Publisher
A Powerfull CMS Tailored for Hotels and Restaurants
Role
Design Lead
Skills
Service Design UI Design UX Design Design Systems
Team
Myself (Design Lead) 1 Part-time UI Designer 2 Senior Project Manager 7 Developers
Period
2024 6 weeks
The Brief
What was the problem?
Hospitality admins faced challenges in communicating essential updates to their frontline employees. Reliance on tools like WhatsApp and email often left employees uninformed, resulting in operational inefficiencies. Favur’s Lead Business Analyst identified this gap and initiated the project to address it. The goal was clear: design and develop a functional MVP within 3 Months, enabling real-world testing with partner restaurants and improving communication workflows in the hospitality sector.
What was the ultimate goal?
In a 100-day span, the goal was to deliver a "good enough" MVP ready for testing. The design and conception needed to be completed within four weeks to enable developers to start production. The primary functionalities to be tested included Company Pages, such as documenting cleaning standards in restaurants, and Events (or "Ereignis" in German), which addressed work-related occurrences, that could be like running out of coconut milk.
Challenges & Solutions
My Design Process
Tools & Methods
Design Thinking Strategies SPRINT-based Collaboration Workshops & Interviews Usability Testing User Flows
Software
Figma (Design & Prototyping) FigJam (Workshops) Azure (Task Management)
Platform
Desktop App Native Mobile App
01. Discovery
Defining Favur Publisher
We kicked off the project under the working name "Favur 100," based on a 100 day MVP method, bringing together developers, founders, product owners, and designers to align on the vision and objectives. The goal was clear: deliver a "good enough" MVP within 100 days to serve as a conversation starter with real users
My approach ?
Instead of lengthy discussions, I applied a Design Sprint methodology by Jake Knapp. I prepared a competitive analysis and a lo-fi mockup, which I used in the first workshop with the Business Owners. In this workshop, we co-created the real first wireframe and user flow, aligning on the core concept and clarifying the direction we wanted to take.
Results
02. Concept & Design
Designing the Framework
After the initial workshop, we gained clarity on the direction. The next step was to translate the idea into a more structured design. I began building out a design system based on Material UI, the library used by the front-end team.
Given the project’s requirements, we (designers & Devs) went for an Atomic Design approach.
I then created high-fidelity designs, collaborating closely with the part-time designer to validate decisions. Together, we refined design components and continuously validated them with Developers and Product Owners, ensuring alignment with both business goals and technical feasibility. This iterative process kept everyone on the same page and maintained momentum.
We went for a Component-based approach, to mimic the development process, by allocating all details in the interactions in each separate component and leaving only the necessary screens .
The design had to be reflected not only in the desktop interface itself, but this information was revealed in the main mobile App "Favur", where the CMS data would be visualize. This was challenguing as we had to manage two different libraries, the one from Favur Publisher and the one from Favur.
Results
03. Pivotal Point
Design & Development alignment
With the design system in place, we faced a critical moment: we needed to ensure smooth collaboration between design and development. Although the design looked good in Figma, we discovered that developers didn’t fully understand our vision. Without their understanding of the design, transitions, and the overall system, we wanted to make sure to complete the project within the 100-day timeframe.
To resolve this, we flew to Spain (where the Dev team was located) for a week to hold a series of four workshops with the development team. The workshops focused on:
Understanding the design and development roadmaps
Identifying pain points
Clarifying areas of overlap, such as Figma organization, component naming conventions, and the design system as a whole
Incorporating an atomic design approach to ensure seamless collaboration
By understanding what the developers needed to see and their priorities, we were able to present the design in a more effective way. These workshops led to significant improvements in cross-team communication and helped us avoid mistakes that would have arisen from miscommunication.
Results
04. User Testing insights & Analisis
The end line of the 100 days
The user testing phase revealed valuable insights despite challenges with data loading and permissions caused by the CMS mirroring the third-party Favur app. With the Business Owner's support, we resolved these issues and completed all tests successfully. Feedback highlighted usability concerns, such as confusing UI transitions and unclear call-to-action phrasing, but overall, users were satisfied and offered ideas for phase two improvements.
I documented the findings, categorized them into clusters, and prioritized them based on impact and complexity (1–5). Through collaborative review, we aligned on priorities and transformed them into actionable user stories, providing a clear roadmap for the next development phase.
