A small community library in Dhaka needed a way for readers to reserve a real seat in its reading room, pay for it online, and browse the collection before ever showing up.
The challenge
The library's real draw was reading-room seating, not book lending, but there was no way to know if a seat was free before walking in, no way to reserve one in advance, and no online view of the collection to browse ahead of a visit. Managing bookings and payment by hand didn't scale and left the client with no reliable record of who was using the room when.
The approach
Seat-first online booking
Visitors browse a 1,200+ book catalog for free, then reserve a specific 1-hour seat for 100 TK, paid securely via bKash — 10 seats per slot, any day the library's open (Saturday–Thursday, 9AM–9PM).
A conversational booking assistant
A Gemini-powered chat assistant walks a visitor through finding an open slot and hands them a ready-to-pay booking link right in the conversation — no manual back-and-forth needed to lock in a seat.
An admin view built for one person to run
A locked-down Google-account admin login shows exactly who's booked into any slot, so the client can manage the room's real occupancy without a phone call or a paper sign-in sheet.
Results
- —Replaced walk-in-only, first-come seating with a real reservation system — visitors know a seat is theirs before they arrive.
- —Payment is collected upfront via bKash at the time of booking, removing manual invoicing and collection at the door.
- —Live in production, used by real visitors to browse the catalog and book real reading-room time.