I designed and coded the UI for Laast.io — an app for repair shop management

The problem

The client is a smartphone / tablet reparator, and owns his own reparation shop that he runs on his own. Being very organized, he worked during years refining his workflows.

This is where he decided to create his own solution, and, why not, to make it available for other reparation shops in France. Laast.io is a huge project, that kept me working during several months, helping his founder to scale and improve his product with the feedback he got from his first customers.

The repair market

The smartphone repair market in France has seen extraordinary growth, with repairs tripling from 363,351 in 2023 to 897,024 in 2024. These factors made the client think about creating his own product, first to be able to test it in his own repair shop, before going live and making it available for the market. There are several growth factors:

When I first met with the client, I discovered that he had already started the project on his own. He already had a strong brand idendity made by another designer, including a logo, a color scheme and themed illustrations, as well as a Figma design made by another professional.

The client provided strong branding assets

I didn’t mind asking why as the client probably had good reasons for that. But we’ll dive into that in details a bit later.

Studying the persona

Before starting the design, I wanted to understand who the end user was. The client had already done a great job at defining a persona, which I helped him refine further. Here is one of the personas we worked on together:

• Persona: Independent smartphone repair technician
• Name: Julien Dupont
• Age: 30-45
• Location: France
• Business type: Independent repair shop owner
• Experience: 8 years in mobile device repairs
• Certifications: Apple Independent Repair Provider (IRP), Samsung Authorized Service Provider
• Professional Background: Julien began his career as a technician in a franchise store before opening his own shop 4 years ago. He specializes in smartphone and tablet repairs, offering personalized, transparent service. His expertise includes screen replacements, battery replacements, water damage restoration, software troubleshooting, and micro-soldering.
• Uses a mix of manual and digital tools to manage repairs, inventory, and customer relationships
• Relies on spreadsheets for inventory tracking and repair status updates
• Uses Google Calendar for scheduling appointments and reminders
• Communicates with customers via phone, email, and SMS for updates and invoicing
• Current pain points:
• Time-consuming manual inventory management
• Difficulty tracking repair status across multiple clients
• Inefficient customer history and warranty claim management
• Limited visibility into business metrics (revenue, repair turnaround time)
• Tech Comfort Level: Moderate – Proficient with web apps and mobile tools, but values simple, intuitive interfaces. Prefers solutions that require minimal setup and training.

Competitive analysis

The repair shop management ecosystem in France is fragmented, with many small players offering niche solutions. However, most of these tools are not well adapted to the end customer, lacking deep localization, strong marketing storytelling, or customer loyalty features. Here are some of the top players in the market:

Layout conception

Like I said earlier, the client came with branding assets (logo, illustrations) as well as a Figma design.

The client provided a Figma design

While being of an ok quality, I immediately noticed that the design was sort of missing the point when looking to the colors and elements from the branding package, given that the client has been very insisting on making usage of the provided brand assets.

The layout went through several iterations before getting an approval, making several adjustements to be able to work properly on mobile devices.

Working on the Kanban board

In Laast.io, the kanban is where everything happens. Repairs are created and managed through the interface, displaying valuable information and alerting the reparator of any urgent actions to take.

The Kanban board is the heart of Laast.io

Repairs can be created from almost anywhere in the application, but they will always end in the Kanban, which is a nice way to centralize critical info in one place.

The calendar is used to plan repairs

A calendar supports planning for repairs. It allows visualizing repairs over a given period, moving them to plan them, and associating them with devices. Interventions can be filtered by status, technician, or device, for precise planning and efficient execution.

The product catalog

Laast also features a full product catalog, wether it is for the actual devices being repaired, but also for all parts, services and accessories that are also for sale.

When you are creating a repair for a new customer, you are selecting a device from the catalog and applying repairs to it, each repair being a group of spare parts attached to a service and a duration.

The product catalog is a key feature of Laast.io

Building a catalog is very challenging as it should make it easy to browse, filter and search items. The catalogue features built-in stock management for every kind of part or accessory. The same applies to the customer registration system.

The panel system

Given the complexity and the number of tasks the user has to perform when using the application, I immediately understood that it would simply look way too busy if everything was happening on the central part of the screen.

The result of the new approach is a set of side panels (or “drawers”) that can chain one with another when the user is adding or editing info on one of his repairs, customers, products or services.

The panel system is the backbone of Laast.io.

Each panel has been redesigned several times following user feedback. The experience has been gradually improved to offer an intuitive and efficient interface.

Sending notifications

The client needed a way to interact with his customers, either manually or in an automated way, depending on the situation. The result is a messaging system that sends and receives delayed messages. The system is also able to send automatic messages when something happens or when some specific actions are performed.

The messaging automates customer notifications.

A quick and easy dashboard

Although Laast.io is not a financial app, it allows to perform financial actions, such as billing customers, accepting payments and sending invoices via email, thus closing related repairs.

The dashboard provides a quick overview of the business.

Although it was not mentionned in the project brief, I ended up proposing a simple dashboard interface to the client that he could use to track the essential numbers about his business, such as the number of repairs, total billed, earnings and other reports.

Key Takeaways

• Designing for a highly specialized niche: Laast.io was built for a very narrow yet underserved audience—independent smartphone repair professionals. The product needed to reflect real-world workflows that are complex, nuanced, and deeply manual, all while staying intuitive for users who may not be tech-savvy or used to SaaS tools.
• Balancing inherited branding with functional UI: Although the client brought in pre-existing branding and Figma designs, the visual direction lacked cohesion with the product’s goals. Iterative work on layout and UI helped align the brand assets (colors, illustrations) with the interface, especially for mobile use, ensuring the product felt consistent and usable.
• Kanban as the operational heart: In Laast.io, the Kanban board is not just a task view—it’s the operational command center. It consolidates repairs, alerts, and scheduling into a single, flexible interface. This centralization improves daily efficiency and gives technicians a clear, actionable view of their workload.
• Layered complexity through panel-based UX: Due to the number of entities (repairs, clients, devices, inventory, scheduling), displaying everything in a single view would have overwhelmed users. A panel (or drawer) system was introduced to compartmentalize workflows, reduce cognitive load, and enable multi-step tasks to flow naturally.
• Localized product-market fit: The product was designed with deep localization for the French market—language, RGPD compliance, VAT invoicing, and business norms were all non-negotiable. Existing tools in the ecosystem lacked this, which gave Laast.io a clear competitive advantage.
• Full-featured catalog design: Laast.io handles complex data relationships between devices, parts, and services. The catalog UI was built to support quick browsing, stock management, and nested selections during the repair creation process, streamlining a major pain point in the client’s original workflow.
• User-driven evolution through feedback: The design process leaned heavily on feedback loops. Core components like panels and the Kanban board were iteratively refined based on real user input, helping surface friction points early and drive meaningful interface improvements.

Before and after

I’d love to share even more about this project, as there are many fascinating aspects that deserve the spotlight. However, I hope this has already given you a strong overview of the work and some of the key challenges we tackled. Thanks for taking the time to explore this journey — I hope you found it as engaging as it was rewarding to create.

If you'd like to connect or learn more, feel free to reach out!