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Igor D.

01 · Smartness · Hospitality SaaS ecosystem

Designing the future of hospitality

Redefining operational control and visual storytelling for modern hotel management.

Client
Smartness
Role
Senior Brand and Product Designer
Industry
Hospitality SaaS
Impact
  • +38% booking conversion
  • −52% check in time
  • SUS 86
Year
2024 to 2025
SmartPMS, the reservation calendar that front desk teams live in.

Overview

A control centre for daily hotel operations

Smartness is a mission critical hospitality SaaS platform managing daily hotel operations, from live reservations and revenue analytics to payments, distribution channels, and guest CRM. Complex legacy systems cause operational friction, human error, and lengthy onboarding. Smartness streamlines multi property workflows into a unified control centre.

Problem

The complexity trap in legacy property management

Operational complexity trail

Legacy property management

Fragmented data

Several properties in one PMS, OTA distribution and channel syncing.

High cognitive load

Dense, noisy tables, deep menu trees and workflows that hide.

Operational slowdown

More room for error, and staff who take longer to get up to speed.

The dual challenge

  1. Friction inside the product

    Hotel staff need to watch property health, take payments and change distribution channels straight away, without digging through deep menu hierarchies or visual noise.

  2. A disconnect outside it

    SaaS products often suffer a gap between how the software looks inside the product and how it is sold outside it. The visual narrative across landing pages and marketing collateral needed to carry the same precision as the dashboard itself.

Strategy

Navigating the mess, with architecture rather than decoration

To bring order to the ecosystem I mapped the operational mental models of the people using it, property managers, front desk operations and financial administrators, then traced the friction points in data ingestion, table scannability and transaction processing.

Smartness platform architecture

Smartness platform

Property and booking

  • Interactive reservation flow
  • Unit inventory
  • Guest CRM records

Payments and distribution

  • Financial dashboards
  • Transaction tracking
  • Live channel sync

Product marketing

  • Scalable landing page assets
  • Feature highlights
  • Visual storytelling

Explorations

Three decisions, and what each one cost

Exploration 01

Dense analytics against information overload

Constraint
Property managers need headline numbers, occupancy, RevPAR, direct bookings, and granular logs.
Trade off
Traditional dashboards either bury details behind modals or flood screens with unformatted cards.
Solution
A modular card system with strict visual hierarchy and progressive disclosure for live transaction logs and property filters.

Exploration 02

Keeping payment and distribution both safe and fast

Constraint
OTAs like Booking.com and Expedia carry real business risk, where a misstep causes double bookings or lost revenue.
Trade off
Multiple confirmation dialogs added safety but slowed front desk check ins.
Solution
Inline validation, high contrast status tags, and payment drawers that guide each step while preserving background context.

Exploration 03

Making the marketing look like the product

Constraint
Stylised marketing mockups that fail to reflect actual product capabilities erode trust on demo calls.
Trade off
Raw screenshots look technical and flat to executive buyers.
Solution
Marketing visuals built directly from production Figma components (modules, calendars, payment logs) styled with considered lighting, elevation, and callouts.

System

The component foundation underneath all of it

Supporting responsive layouts across desktop workstations and tablets meant the system had to be built once and adapt, rather than drawn twice.

Smartness design system

Core tokens

  • Semantic colour
  • Typography
  • Spatial grid
  • Surface depth

UI components

  • Adaptive tables
  • Filter toolbars
  • Status badges
  • Action drawers

Ecosystem patterns

  • Property management flow
  • Payment and checkout engine
  • Booking distribution grid
  • Product marketing visuals
Components in use across operations, housekeeping, messaging, payments and analytics.

Deliverables

Four flows, end to end

Deliverable 01

Property management and operational dashboard

Built for immediate scannability. Interactive grid layouts for room inventory, reservation timelines and guest status that cut the cognitive load on front desk operators.

Bookings colour coded by channel, with rate detail one hover away.
The full SmartPMS flow, from booking through to reporting.

Deliverable 02

Payment and financial analytics

A financial dashboard with live transaction processing, payout status and revenue distribution, built for speed and for auditability.

SmartPay, where payment settings and live balances sit side by side.
From charge to reconciliation, with the automation called out at each step.

Deliverable 03

Booking and distribution operations

A centralised reservations and CRM surface where commercial teams track leads, negotiate, confirm bookings and watch inventory move across channels.

SmartCRS, with the day's queue and performance in one view.
From lead to loyalty, with every channel captured in one inbox.

Deliverable 04

Marketing and visual storytelling

A curated visual library for product launches, feature announcements and landing pages, keeping the brand consistent across every marketing touchpoint.

Marketing assets drawn from the same components as the product.

Reflection

What I would carry into the next one

  1. 01

    Simplicity is an architectural decision, not a visual layer

    In complex B2B SaaS a clean interface is not enough. Real simplicity comes from considered component architecture, a strict information hierarchy and understanding what someone is trying to do at every step.

  2. 02

    Product and marketing are the same story

    Aligning the design system inside the product with the visuals outside it built trust early in the buyer journey. When a prospect sees collateral that honestly reflects the product, conversion and onboarding both improve.

  3. 03

    Design systems have to scale across contexts

    Modular components that adapt between dense tables on a desktop monitor and larger touch targets on a tablet meant the platform met hotel staff where they actually work.