Overview

A tool to help facilitate a healthy work-life balance

WorkHub is an employee scheduling/timesheet tool that helps employers and employees to save time on scheduling, submitting shift requests and team communication by streamlining all processes into one app.
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The project prompt was provided by the Google x Coursera UX Design Professional Certificate course.

The Problem

😖 Lack of capacity to have a healthy work-life balance

📱 Necessary tools are not streamlined and available

Both parties are often times juggling additional responsibilities outside of work and a lack of an organized and efficient platform makes it all the more difficult to balance time spent on each aspect of life.

Scheduling employees and creating timesheets are a headache for employers and for employees it can be difficult managing shift switches with co-workers when there is a lack of a communication platform.

Design & Research Approach

🎯 Help employers and employees to have a “one-stop” tool that helps facilitates efficiency and flexibility outside of work

The goal is to help employers and employees save time by streamlining the process of staff scheduling, managing/submitting employee shifts and requests, and communication with coworkers into a one-stop tool that can be accessed at their convenience.

The Solution

Welcome, WorkHub

WorkHub aims to help employers and employees cultivate a healthy work-life balance by streamlining scheduling, submitting shift requests and team communication all into one app.

Schedule Dashboard

Quickly see who's working and when

The homepage defaults to the schedule for each day that week, wasting no time for users to find important information regarding their schedule.

Shifting and Availability Function

Shift employees and submit work availabilities on-the-go

Allowing users to perform these tedious functions at their convenience helps to facilitate healthier time-management.

Chat and Contact Tools

Easy to contact and communicate with the team

With each team members’ contact information readily available and the ability to chat and call, shift changes and cover requests have never been easier.

An analysis of the top scheduling software in use today found a number of common issues:
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- Cluttered UI
- Too many steps needed to request days off
- Limited task submission options
- Is often only user friendly for either the employee or employer, never both

🙋🏻 User Interviews

What's not working?

I proceeded to interview a group of participants - particularly those that are currently employers and employees that operate through timesheets and weekly scheduling. Additionally, all participants had additional responsibilities that they tend to outside of work, allowing me to get an idea of features that would help them balance everything efficiently. The key takeaways found the following user pain points:

🤳🏻 Usability Testing Insights

What does our audience need?

The same participants interviewed were then asked to use a few competitor apps to identify gaps in their design and uncover opportunities for further improvement that could be implemented. For the purpose of the project, we focused on the specific user tasks of: scheduling staff, requesting days off, submitting availabilities, and communication with coworkers. Participants highlighted the following:

Taking the research into consideration, I created two user personas to better understand our target audience. I created two personas to represent two different user experiences: the employer and employee

🗺 User Journey Map

What does the user experience look like?

There are two distinct user personas created to represent WorkHub’s target demographic; the employer and the employee. A user journey map was created to further explore the experience of Daniel as he navigates creating a new shift schedule for his employees.

✏ Sketches & Lo-Fi Wireframes

What are the main focus screens we need?

The sketch and wireframe process focuses on the home, chatroom, and notifications pages. I focused on including updates on upcoming/new shifts and important alerts on the homepage so that finding the necessary information would be more streamlined for the user. Additionally, conversing with employees/coworkers is more efficient as each individual’s contact information and the option to begin a conversation is all in one area. Finally, the calendar view allows users to easily see upcoming shifts and keep track of previous ones.

🤯 Challenges

How do I tackle this learning curve?

As this project was my first official case study, it was definitely a huge learning curve to have to learn about the entire process as a whole when designing a new product. It was difficult to grasp certain concepts concretely throughout the Google x Coursera course as often times it would not go into enough detail (ex. User Research). Thus, it was difficult for me to conduct in depth User Research throughout the project that would allow for me to have more concrete data to back up certain design decisions.

🤓 What I’ve Learnt

Good User Research is the key to success

I used to think that so long as the product is visually appealing, the user would be happy. Since completing this project I’ve recognized the importance of User Research in helping the overall design process. Not only does it help to frame each project and place the User at the centre of the design process and the product; but also to back up reasonings for certain design decisions.

Less is more

As I underwent the design process for the product, I had lots of trouble thinking of how to implement my problem statement into the product itself. How would I help my users save time to ensure they have a healthy work-life balance? I eventually decided to implement Hick’s Law, ensuring that my users are only presented with the choices that they need to make and nothing more. Through reducing the amount of extra functions on the pages I was able to ensure that my user saves time and instead is able to make an efficient decision.

🥅 Improvements for the Future

Research my users more in-depth

In the future, I would like to use a survey or more fleshed out interview process to collect more opinions of my users. I believe that this would allow for a more solid foundation when beginning to design the product as there would be more data to support and guide design decisions. In terms of this project, I believe a survey would help to collect more details as to specific elements that users would like in a work-scheduling app.

Be more open to change

As a designer I found myself growing attached to certain design choices that were made and was unable to be flexible with changes. Rather than viewing the design process as linear, I now recognize that I must be more open to changes as there are always improvements that can be made to further support the user.

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