Designing a barbershop booking app — which screens are absolute must-haves?

The single most important brief to give your designer: 'Do not force user registration.' A flow asking for passwords, birthdays, and addresses right at launch is digital suicide for your shop. Ask for screens that authenticate via phone number and SMS OTP only. Grabbing their name at the booking confirmation step is more than enough.

Pay very close attention to the slot logic on the time-selection screen. For example, if a haircut takes 45 minutes and a beard trim takes 20, the UI design must show how cleanup time and barber breaks appear as greyed-out blocks. If the time-slot layout isn't flexible, appointments will inevitably double-book.

First thing you should request from the designer is a 'Rebook Last Appointment' button. Most barbershop clients see the same barber for the exact same service every time. If they open the app and see a prominent 'Book with Ahmet like last time' card right at the top, the whole flow takes 5 seconds.

imo definitely do not force payments during booking. plenty of customers hate typing in card details right away. tbh get them to design a clean confirmation screen with 'pay in shop' and 'pay deposit now' side by side.

You're focusing on client screens, but what about the in-shop screens the barbers will use? Does that £3,500 budget include a simple barber interface for a tablet at each station showing the daily lineup, late arrivals, or a quick 15-minute break toggle?

edit: I wrote something wrong above, sorry about that.

The designer's deliverables definitely need to include these 4 micro-state screens: 1) A 'Barber is running 10 mins late' notification box, 2) A get directions button that pops up 2 hours before the appointment, 3) An info modal when the shop is closed, 4) A mini hairstyle gallery where past haircut photos can be uploaded.

Instead of getting your own app designed from scratch have you considered white-labeling an off-the-shelf barber booking software already on the market? 3,500 pounds will go just to design; coding and app store fees on top of that will easily hit 10-12k pounds. Will you ever see a return on that cost for just 4 chairs?

quick summary for newcomers: When making decisions write down the worst-case scenario too, not just the best.

I completely agree. Any unwritten clause becomes a point of disagreement later, as both sides remember it differently.

Any unwritten clause becomes a point of disagreement later, as both sides remember it differently. I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.

I agree, and I'd like to emphasize that. Everyone rushing into barbershop booking app design gets stuck at the same point.

If I were you, I'd go this route.

Let me clarify the technical side. Payment schedules should be tied to project phases, not calendar dates.

Proven by experience.

If you're going this route, sort this out first. Trying to do this alone is the most expensive way.

I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.

My perspective changed after experiencing that. Processes without records never improve, because you don't know what to fix.

Good luck with that.

Let's separate the concepts they're getting mixed up... tbh when making a decision first look at what data you have on hand.

Im also curious if anyone does it differently.

You're right.

My perspective changed after experiencing that... like if acceptance criteria aren't written when the work is done is open to debate.

Proven by experience.

I agree.

my questions are cleared up, thans and btw in legacy systems, the most expensive thing is unknown dependencies.