Joined the week of launch. Day 1 was just me. Two years later: iOS, Android, a consumer widget, and a full responsive web platform.
Reserve launched its MVP out of Expa, an NYC startup studio, with almost no user testing done prior to launch. I joined the week it went live. Day 1 was just me. Day 30 I hired a designer. Day 45 a researcher. We had to move fast and earn trust at the same time.
The operations team had been running informal research for months — visiting restaurants, collecting feedback. The problem was systematic bias. Findings confirmed existing beliefs instead of challenging them.
I redesigned the feedback process from scratch and trained the ops team on valid usability methodology. Within 30 days, six ops team members were functioning as an extension of the research team. That shifted the executive team's perception of what design could do.
We ran a focused three-week research sprint: competitive audit, 50+ diner surveys and interviews, 10 moderated usability sessions, five personas, and a full journey map. The output was an 87-page report with specific, actionable next steps.
That report changed everything. Expa's trust shifted. We gained full autonomy. I brought the contractors on full-time.
Reserve was a demand-based platform — you requested a table, the restaurant decided whether to accept it. This worked for the most exclusive restaurants. For everyone else, users couldn't understand why their reservation wasn't confirmed in five seconds. Acceptance rates were around 60%.
We identified three failure modes through research: the request model didn't compute for most users; diners were more attached to specific restaurants than they admitted during interviews; and framing Reserve as a concierge created expectations Reserve couldn't meet.
After several failed attempts to solve this through copy and UI adjustments, we landed on a different frame entirely: make the request experience feel like a real-life conversation — the mental model of calling a restaurant or talking to a concierge.
Comprehension improved dramatically. Willingness to wait for a confirmation increased. We validated this through rounds of moderated testing before shipping.
The longer fix was building a B2B restaurant management system that let Reserve secure inventory directly — enabling instant booking. We shipped that product (covered in the B2B case study), updated the consumer app for direct booking, built a web booking widget for restaurant partners, and launched the full reserve.com experience.
Complete iOS app overhaul. Native Android app, built from scratch. Consumer booking widget. Responsive web platform. A research practice and design culture that didn't exist when I walked in on day one.