A booking platform that runs itself

A small dealership does not have a technical team. It has people who sell cars, and any system that assumes otherwise stops being used within a month.

So the brief was to build something that runs without attention. Editing had to be obvious enough to do once a fortnight without a manual, the booking flow had to work with nobody administering it, and when something broke we had to know first.

Next.js and TypeScript, with a structured content model so the dealership’s own staff change stock and opening hours without a developer. Bookings trigger email confirmations to the customer and the dealership. Error monitoring and separate staging and production environments from launch.

Nothing that needs a developer on a Tuesday afternoon. That was the point.

If the people who have to live with a system were not considered while it was designed, it will be abandoned and replaced by a spreadsheet.

Designing for the least engaged user — the person who will touch this twice a month, in a hurry — is the difference between software that gets used and software that gets paid for and forgotten.