Project
Navalha
Product design
Web design
Mobile app
2026
The brief
Navalha was started in 2021 by Rui Barros, who runs two barbershops in Porto, after a Saturday when three customers turned up for the same chair. It now takes bookings for 260 shops in Portugal and Galicia, and they had outgrown it: the counter used a tablet screen built for phones, barbers checked their day on a printout taped to the mirror, and walk-ins, half of a Saturday’s cuts, weren’t in the system at all. Navalha wanted one product for the counter, the chair and the customer before opening in Madrid in spring 2026.
The idea
A barbershop thinks in chairs and half hours, so the tablet at the counter shows exactly that: barbers across the top, the day down the side, a brass line for now. Walk-ins get held slots in the same grid, so the counter can say 11:20 instead of “about forty minutes”. Every barber gets the day as a list on their phone with the notes that matter at the chair, and customers book in three taps without an account. Every shop also gets its own booking site, set like the price board on the wall.
The shop’s own site
Every shop gets a booking site with its own photographs: the street, the chairs, the next free time in brass, and prices set like the board on the wall.
Booking a cut
Choose a barber and a time, and the confirmation fills the screen in brass: the day, the time, and who will cut.
At the counter
The counter tablet shows four chairs as tall columns, half hour by half hour, with a brass line for now and the next free chair set large.
At the chair
Each barber’s phone shows how many cuts are left and who is next, with what they had last time.
The owner’s week
On the laptop, the week across both shops: cuts, chairs filled, walk-ins seated and takings.
What changed
The new counter, chair and booking screens reached all 260 shops in February 2026, and the first Madrid shops opened on them in April. Walk-ins are booked like everyone else now, so a Saturday’s takings show up in the owner’s week instead of in a notebook by the till.
Credits
Okapi: João Antunes (lead product designer), Marta Lobo (UX writing), Duarte Neves (print)
Navalha: Rui Barros (founder), Tiago Moreira (engineering)
With: photography by Rafael Costa in Porto
