Shift Scheduling
SUMMARY
Spur’s workplace web app was initially designed to support an education staffing business that relied on the software to book long-term jobs or unplanned, same-day absences. As Spur expanded its reach to businesses that employed hourly workers, the need for an integrated shift scheduling tool became a top priority.
MY ROLE
Lead UX/UI Designer, Researcher
Spring 2019
THE CHALLENGE
Most SMBs employing hourly workers schedule their shifts on a weekly basis and need to be able to quickly and easily identify and fill gaps in the schedule. Many businesses fight with digital and paper spreadsheets to create and distribute schedules. Additionally, there are a number of free or low-cost scheduling tools in the market, making such a tool a common expectation among potential customers. As an all-in-one HR and Payroll platform, Spur needed a shift scheduling tool to:
Make scheduling workers fast and easy, negating the need for paper schedules
Compete with other scheduling tools that potential customers were already using
Help convince businesses to use Spur as their all-in-one HR, Time Tracking, and Payroll platform
Additionally, in early 2019 we had a potential customer ready to onboard but for whom no Scheduling tool was a deal-breaker.
THE SOLUTION
Research, design, and build a scheduling tool, and fast! In a 3-4 week timeframe I…
Researched 10 other scheduling tools to compare features and understand what was common among those tools
Interviewed customer about their scheduling process including current tools they used and what they liked and disliked about those tools
Wrote an internal press release to capture and define what to include in our ideal scheduling tool
Collaborated with PO, engineers, and head of customer experience to decide on features to pursue first
Designed wireframes,
hi-fidelity mock-ups and simple prototypes
Within the month we launched v1 as a beta release and included an in-app feedback tool to collect customer insights and recommendations.
After the launch, I conducted more interviews with customers about the most important features to add next. Over the next 2 months we launched multiple iterations based on my original designs, as well as updated designs based on new user feedback.
Highly requested, we first released the ability to create draft shifts and publish with one click. That was followed up with an additional user request for enhanced filtering.
As part of a related but separate project, during this time I also redesigned the site’s main header and navigation providing a cleaner, simpler experience.
Draft shifts with one-click publishing
Enhanced filtering states
Enhanced filtering by position
In 2019, I also designed a feature to copy one week to the next, but due to the fast-pace nature of a small start-up, limited resources and higher priorities, that feature was shelved at that time.
In Fall 2020, as the Product Owner, I had the opportunity to bring that feature back, including gathering new user feedback, making user flows, and designing new options not part of the original feature.
LESSONS LEARNED
Keep things as small as is valuable, but no smaller!
Smaller means easier to make, to launch, and to improve on.
Success - we were able to ship quickly and gather feedback to continue to improve the feature
Failure - too hasty to get the feature out the door, launched without a critical feature for our target audience (draft + publish)
Prioritize iterations!
New features need attention and a little TLC to reach their maximum impact.
Success - we got a few iterations added within a couple of months of initial feature launch which definitely improved the usefulness and user experience of the schedule feature
Failure - we had 2-3 others we felt were important (and were common across competing tools) but failed to prioritize, so after the first couple of months, the feature sat virtually as-is for over a year
Listen to your users!
They will tell you almost everything you need to know
Success - the in-app feedback tool gave us confirmation of the need for some of those additional features we thought were important (like copy schedule)
Failure - with too many competing priorities, that information sat unused for way too long