Streamlining space scheduling with a bespoke $0 SaaS

This project began in the summer of 2022, during my internship as an Alan Sheperd Resident Consultant at District 3. Post-pandemic, many innovation hubs were struggling with hybrid work patterns, and D3 was no exception.

"We need better tech solutions to get people back in the office," was the brief. The existing room booking system - built by a D3 startup that had since pivoted away from facilities management - was abandoned and broken. People were booking rooms by Slack messages, emails, and sticky notes.

That simple fix grew over two years into a complete room management ecosystem. No grand vision drove it; I fixed each frustration as it surfaced, and the fixes compounded.

This project rewarded small fixes over grand plans. The booking hack became a room management ecosystem because I kept listening to user feedback and kept iterating.

The tension between D3's vibrant brand identity and functional interface needs improved the final design: brand graphics got the prominent real estate, interactions stayed minimal, and the screens feel like D3 without costing usability.

A custom build beat the commercial alternatives here because I designed it around D3's specific constraints: a nonprofit budget, a Google-stack backend, and 1200+ startup members. None of the six platforms I evaluated could satisfy all three.

D3 still runs the system, and it keeps absorbing small changes as new needs surface. That was the hope when I built it.