BRAVE
ATLAS
Balancing operational reality, user expectations, and platform limitations to create a workable membership system.
Rebecca Boraz was opening Brave Atlas, a community printmaking studio in Portland, Oregon. The studio offers shared access to professional equipment and studio space, creating a place where approved members could work independently within a carefully managed environment. I was brought in to create a website that would both introduce the studio, and support how the studio would actually operate day to day.
The Brave Atlas website had to serve two very different audiences at once. For the general public and prospective members, it needed to clearly communicate the studio’s purpose, offerings, and membership options. For active members, it needed to function as an operational tool, supporting membership payments and allowing members to reserve studio time and the printing press.
Role
Product Designer
Goals
Enable approval-based studio memberships
Support differential access and pricing
Allow members to reserve shared resources
Minimize admin overhead for the owner
Constraints
Real client: community printmaking studio
Physical resources + liability
No custom development budget
Wix Studio chosen for maintainability
Core mismatch: staff-based services vs. shared resource access
Team
Product Design
Studio Owner
Shipped Solution
A website with a systems-driven approach to membership access, pricing, and shared resource scheduling that includes:
Membership application & approval flow
Custom booking logic for shared resources
Members-only reservation experience
Tiered membership system
Payment flows aligned with access rules
Discover
the details
How & Why
Problem & Framing
The challenge was not visual design, but translating a real-world access system into a platform built for a fundamentally different kind of business.
There was no budget for custom development, and long-term maintainability was a priority. Wix Studio was chosen based on cost and accessibility, with the expectation that the studio owner would manage the site independently after launch.
However, Wix’s booking functionality is designed for traditional service businesses, such as massage studios or salons, where services are tied to specific staff members and appointments are one-to-one. This did not map cleanly to Brave Atlas’s needs, where access is membership-based, resources are shared, and payment rules differ by member type.
This framing shifted the focus from building features to designing a system that could model real-world access rules and payment requirements.
Strategic Intent
Enable a seamless membership and booking system that reflects real studio operations, prioritizes owner manageability, avoids unnecessary custom code.
System Architecture & Membership Logic
This system architecture establishes membership type as the primary control layer, separating public discovery from gated actions and defining how access and pricing are enforced across the system.
Member Types & Needs
Full Members
-
Unlimited access
-
No per-use payment
-
Can reserve printing press
Partial Members
-
Pay to reserve printing press
-
Pay per studio session
-
Use same physical space, different financial rules
Before defining the booking flows, the system needed to account for a set of operational, platform, and experience constraints that would shape every design decision.
Key Constraints & Design Decisions
Key constraints were treated as design inputs rather than obstacles, defining the boundaries within which the membership system could operate. By establishing these rules upfront, the resulting booking logic reflects real-world studio operations while avoiding unnecessary technical complexity.
Constraint
Requirement
Solution
The studio operates with a single printing press, requiring exclusive access to prevent scheduling conflicts and operational disruption.
The system needed to:
Enforce exclusive access to a shared physical resource
Make press availability visible and predictable for all members
Eliminate the need for manual scheduling oversight
The printing press was modeled as a single shared resource with exclusive booking availability, ensuring only one member can reserve it at a time while keeping scheduling transparent and self-managed.
The site needed to support public discovery while restricting all booking and payment functionality to approved members.
The system needed to:
Support open exploration of the studio and membership options
Restrict booking and payment flows to approved members
Clearly signal the transition from public content to gated access
A layered access model was designed where all marketing content remains public, while the full booking experience lives behind members-only pages. Reservation access is granted only after approval, with clear entry points guiding users into the application process.
Full and partial members have different access rights and pricing, but confusing or inconsistent flows could undermine trust.
The system needed to:
Communicate access and pricing differences clearly
Maintain consistent interaction patterns across membership types
Ensure both paths felt intentional and equitable
Parallel booking flows were designed to share structure and language while enforcing different rules behind the scenes. This allowed members to understand their access intuitively without being confronted with system limitations or arbitrary restrictions.
Partial members must pay per studio session, but Wix does not support concurrent bookings for the same service.
Partial members needed a way to:
Pay at the time of reservation
Book studio time concurrently with other members
Use shared space without scheduling conflicts
Partial members were assigned a unique studio “service,” enabling concurrent bookings and individual payments. Partial members reserve the press, aligning payment logic with platform constraints to create a predictable experience.
Single Shared Printing Press
Public Marketing vs. Member-Only Booking
Differential Access Without Undermining Trust
Partial Members: Payment + Concurrent Studio Use
Public vs. Member Experience
Constraint
The site needed to support public discovery while restricting all booking and payment functionality to approved members.
Requirement
The system needed to:
-
Support open exploration of the studio and membership options
-
Restrict booking and payment flows to approved members
-
Clearly signal the transition from public content to gated access
Solution
A layered access model was designed where all marketing content remains public, while the full booking experience lives behind members-only pages. Reservation access is granted only after approval, with clear entry points guiding users into the application process.
Differential Access Without Undermining Trust
Constraint
Full and partial members have different access rights and pricing, but confusing or inconsistent flows could undermine trust.
Requirement
The system needed to:
-
Communicate access and pricing differences clearly
-
Maintain consistent interaction patterns across membership types
-
Ensure both paths felt intentional and equitable
Solution
Parallel booking flows were designed to share structure and language while enforcing different rules behind the scenes. This allowed members to understand their access intuitively without being confronted with system limitations or arbitrary restrictions.
Partial Members: Payment & Concurrent Studio Use
Constraint
Partial members must pay per studio session, but Wix does not support concurrent bookings for the same service.
Requirement
Partial members needed a way to:
-
Pay at the time of reservation
-
Book studio time concurrently with other members
-
Use shared space without scheduling conflicts
Solution
Partial members were assigned a unique studio “service,” enabling concurrent bookings and individual payments. Partial members reserve the press, aligning payment logic with platform constraints to create a predictable experience.
Single Shared Printing Press
Constraint
The studio operates with a single printing press, requiring exclusive access to prevent scheduling conflicts and operational disruption.
Requirement
The system needed to:
Enforce exclusive access to a shared physical resource
Make press availability visible and predictable for all members
Eliminate the need for manual scheduling oversight
Solution
The printing press was modeled as a single shared resource with exclusive booking availability, ensuring only one member can reserve it at a time while keeping scheduling transparent and self-managed.
With these constraints defined, the booking flows were designed to translate system rules into clear, predictable member experiences.
Applying the System Logic to Booking Flows
Booking logic became the core product challenge, and were designed to operationalize system rules. Translating membership type, access permissions, and pricing logic into predictable, easy-to-understand reservation paths preserved clarity and enforced real-world constraints. The following flows capture the key decisions that shaped the booking logic and explain how platform limitations were translated into intentional system behavior.
Together, these decisions resulted in a booking experience that feels simple to members while remaining operationally robust behind the scenes.
The Resulting Experience
The final solution is a responsive website that supports both public discovery and day-to-day studio operations. Prospective members can learn about the studio and apply for membership, while approved members can manage payments and reserve the printing press or studio time with confidence.
The system enforces access rules and payment requirements automatically, reduces manual coordination, and gives the studio owner clear control without ongoing technical complexity. Most importantly, it reflects how the studio actually works, rather than forcing operations to conform to the limitations of the platform.
Future Considerations
These future considerations extend the existing system architecture rather than introducing new complexity, preserving clarity as the studio grows.
Scaled Membership & Resource Expansion
As the studio grows, the system could evolve to support additional shared resources or new membership tiers, testing whether the current architecture can scale without increasing cognitive or administrative load.
Scalable Content & System Templates
As the studio grows, creating reusable templates for repeatable structures, such as member profiles and booking pages, could further reduce administrative overhead. A plug-and-play site architecture would allow the studio owner to update images and copy without reconfiguring logic, preserving system integrity as content scales.
Reporting for Operational Decision-Making
Introducing lightweight reporting on press usage, peak studio times, and membership behavior could help the owner make informed decisions about pricing, capacity, or future equipment investment.
Scaled Membership & Resource Expansion
As the studio grows, the system could evolve to support additional shared resources or new membership tiers, testing whether the current architecture can scale without increasing cognitive or administrative load.
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