Case Study
DS Communication Center — Unified Inbox
A unified inbox for property agencies to manage guest communication across multiple booking platforms in one streamlined workspace.
Product Design Responsive Web SaaS
The Brief
Short-term rental managers typically list properties across several booking platforms, Airbnb, Booking.com, and others, and each platform comes with its own separate inbox. The result is a fractured communication workflow: switching between logins just to keep up with guest messages, which becomes harder to sustain as a portfolio of properties grows.
DS Destination Solutions needed a way to bring all of that messaging into one place. The goal was a communication hub built directly into their existing property management system, one that would let property managers respond, delegate, and resolve guest conversations without juggling multiple platforms.
The Approach
I started by mapping the actual day-to-day reality of a property manager handling guest messages. What they needed was straightforward: every conversation visible in one view, enough context to respond without hunting for details elsewhere, fast replies, and a clean way to loop in a colleague or support when something was outside their scope.
That led to a three-panel structure. On the left, a scrollable list of conversations with status and timing at a glance. In the center, the full message thread with reply functionality built in. On the right, the booking itself, dates, guest count, cancellation policy, payment schedule, surfaced automatically so nobody has to leave the conversation to look it up.
The sidebar navigation stayed deliberately sparse. That wasn't an oversight, it was planning ahead: leaving room for future PMS features to slot in without forcing a navigation redesign down the line.
There was also a point of disagreement worth mentioning. The product manager wanted guest ratings displayed inside the inbox itself. I pushed back on that. Ratings live in a different part of the user's mental model than active conversation handling, and folding them in would add noise exactly where focus matters most. That discussion was still unresolved when the project was paused, something I'd consider unfinished business in the design.
The Work
The final design spans the entire communication flow, built for both desktop and mobile.
Desktop gives property managers the full picture at once. Color-coded sender avatars, status tags (open, in progress, archived), and timestamps make it easy to scan and prioritize without opening every thread. Replies can include saved text blocks or attachments, and conversations can be reassigned to teammates or escalated to DS support without leaving the screen.
Response speed mattered for a reason beyond convenience: platforms like Airbnb factor response time into how visible a listing is. So the design includes a flagging mechanism for messages sitting unanswered past a reasonable window, plus the option to schedule automatic replies by day and time, so guests get acknowledged even when nobody's actively monitoring the inbox.
The mobile version simplifies down to a single scrollable list with a hamburger menu for navigation, built specifically for checking in on urgent messages outside regular hours. At the time, the broader PMS had no mobile support at all, so this filled a real gap in coverage.
The Result
What shipped was a fully specified Figma design for a messaging tool that pulls guest communication from multiple channels into one coherent, context-rich interface. It covers the entire path from spotting a new message to responding to resolving it, across both screen sizes, and was structured to slot into the existing PMS rather than function as a bolt-on tool.