Scalable Booking Platform
The project
Designed and implemented a 1:1 coaching booking system built into Asian Student Achievement's (ASA) WordPress site, replacing a fragmented manual intake process for 500+ clients, volunteer coaches, and the Operations team.
My role
Sole UX Designer responsible for research, platform selection, testing, and implementation.
Project duration
1 year
Tools
Figma
WordPress
Summary
Why this matters
One of ASA's core pillars is one-on-one mentorship, but no reliable booking intake process existed. Their existing Google Forms booking process was a slow, fragmented chain that created a bottleneck in one of ASA's core services.
With a new WordPress site and a potential partnership funding opportunity tied to the coaching program, the CEO wanted a professional, integrated solution that could last long after my internship.
What ASA needs
Offload scheduling from the Operations team through automation
Give students a clear, self-service way to find and book a coaching session
Give coaches autonomy to manage their own availability and sessions
The solution
I designed and built three interconnected pages that together replaced ASA's manual intake process with a self-sustaining coaching system.
To ensure the system outlived my internship, I also created two SOPs in collaboration with the Operations Manager: one for the Operations team covering page management and coach onboarding, and one for volunteer coaches with key references and portal guidance.
Coaching landing page: A brand new WordPress page that introduced ASA's coaching service, outlined coaching topics, showcased mentor profiles, and funneled students directly into booking.
Client booking: A step-by-step intake form that collected everything coaches needed upfront: coaching topic, preferred date and time, basic contact info, and resume.
Coach portal: A password-protected hub where volunteer coaches managed availability, approved sessions, and defined their areas of expertise.
Research & Strategy
Mapping the old intake process
Every coaching request came in through a Google Form, and the Operations Manager coordinated by hand between client requests and coach calendars. Walking through that process with the Operations team showed me that the scheduling itself wasn't the issue. The biggest pain point was in the back and forth communication that pulled the Operations Manager away from other work. The new system needed to remove that middleman, keep coaches in control of approving sessions, and open coaching to volunteers who could manage their own availability.
The old intake process. Six manual steps, with the Operations manager coordinating every handoff between clients and staff.
Understanding business goals
I did a deep dive with ASA's CEO to discuss the project and align on four goals that would shape every design and platform decision:
Self-service on both sides: Students needed a clearer path to book sessions, and coaches needed a portal to manage their schedules and bookings without relying on ASA staff
Offload Operations overhead: Automate the intake and scheduling process so the Operations manager was no longer the bottleneck between students and coaches
WordPress compatibility: With ASA's WordPress domain less than two years old, the solution had to fit the existing site so staff could maintain it without heavy technical support
Built to last: The system had to be sustainable after my internship ended, which shaped every decision from platform selection to the SOPs I built alongside it
Evaluating technical solutions
I chose Amelia because it was the only option that supported file uploads, which ASA needed so clients could share their resumes before a session. The tradeoff was control. Amelia let me adjust color and text, but only to a point, so I focused my design effort on the pages around the booking tool and the flow leading into it.
Three booking plugins compared against ASA's requirements, with Amelia highlighted as the selected option.
Designing the new flow
Before moving into design, I mapped the new flow with ASA's stakeholders to agree on how clients, coaches, and the Operations team would connect. It kept he build grounded as details changed.
The new system. Students book directly, volunteer coaches approve and manage their own sessions, and confirmation emails send automatically.
Wireframes & Drafts
I used low fidelity wireframes in Figma to convey the initial structure for the landing page and coaching portal. Because Amelia limited how much of the interface I could shape, most of the iteration happened directly in a WordPress draft, where I could see how the plugin actually behaved.
Landing page
The wireframe set the page's basic structure. Once the content was in WordPress, there was more information than I anticipated, so I added a table of content to help visitors jump to the section they needed. I also added a coach login directly on the landing page so coaches can reach their portal quickly.
Landing page wireframe (left) and WordPress draft (right), with table to contents and coach login added.
Coaching portal
A password-protected hub for volunteer coaches to manage availability, sessions, and resources independently without relying on ASA staff.
Usability Testing
Before testing, I developed a usability testing plan and aligned with the CEO and Operations Manager on testing procedure and goals. The Operations Manager and I then recruited 5 ASA interns as client testers and 4 board members as coach testers, each completing test flows tailored to their role.
Learnings from clients
✅ Booking was straightforward and easy to complete
✅ Email confirmations were clear and reliable
❌ Several coaching topic names caused confusion and discouraged bookings
❌ Users had no immediate confirmation that their cancellation was processed
Learnings from coaches
✅ Automated emails made onboarding and appointment access frictionless
❌ The portal's default dashboard view often hid upcoming appointments made outside the visible date range
❌ Some navigation took longer than expected, which was a concern given the portal needed to be fully autonomous
How testing shaped iteration
Built a cancellation confirmation page
to give users explicit feedback that their session was cancelled.
Final Design & Build
Landing page
Structured to inform first, then convert.
A table of contents at the top gave clients quick access to the program overview, coaching topics, and coach profiles before reaching the booking intake form at the bottom of the page.
Coach's portal
Built for immediate, independent access.
After a password protection layer, coaches landed on the Amelia login panel to manage their schedule, availability, and session approvals. Below that, shared resources including session agendas and learning materials gave coaches everything they needed to run sessions independently.
Impact
Sessions per quarter nearly tripled
Bookings grew from 8 in Q4 in 2025 to 22 in Q3 2026, with 55 sessions booked in total since launch.
Estimated 2-4 hours saved per intake cycle
Prior to this, the Operations Manager had to manually coordinate between client requests and staff calendars to complete a booking. Automating this process gave the Operations team time to focus on higher-impact work.
22 new coaches onboarded
The portal's self-management capabilities made it feasible to scale the coaching roster without adding operational overhead. ASA was able to bring on coaches from new partner organizations with a system built to support them.
81% found booking easy
In a client survey, 22 of 27 respondents described the booking process as "very easy" or "easy."
Reflection
This project pushed me to think beyond the screen. The design had to work for clients booking a session, volunteer coaches managing their own schedules, and for an Operations team that no longer had to coordinate every appointment by hand. It also had to keep working after my internship ended, which is why the SOP's mattered as much as the webpages.
After the launch, the Operations team tracked sessions and surveyed clients, but I had no baseline from the old process, so I can't say how much the system changed. If I were to do this again, I would capture that baseline before launch and build in analytics from the start to see where users drop off in the booking flow and how coaches engage with the portal over time. I would also explore how the experience translates across devices earlier, particularly for coaches who may be managing sessions on mobile in between commitments.
Keeping the CEO aligned meant constantly translating design decisions into business outcomes, and that skill shaped the project as much as the designs themselves.
