CLIENT // University of Colorado – Denver
TYPE // Thesis Project
PLATFORM // Mobile
TIMELINE // 4 Months
SHYFT
Project
Goals
- Create a mobile time tracking and scheduling application for non-traditional workers
- Allow users to submit schedules, request time off, and switch shifts directly without the need for management and traditional paper schedules
- Create transparency for all employees and management on who is covering which times and how often they are working
Team
- 1 UX Designer
SHYFT was my thesis project during my final year at UCD. Coming from a retail management background, I knew the struggle with scheduling a group of non-traditional employees (those that don’t work the standard 9 to 5, Monday to Friday) and wanted to create a mobile application that would take a lot of the work out of the managers hands, and place it directly in the hands of the employees.
I was working at Oskar Blues at the time, and they allowed me to use their multiple restaurants to gather a large group of users to research and test with. It started with a survey that was sent out to around 70 servers, bartenders and managers, with the intent of finding out what they liked and didn’t like about the current scheduling system (which was still done by hand on paper).
The feedback confirmed my suspicion that nobody, no matter what their role, enjoyed the current system. It was time consuming and irritating for the manager who had to make the schedule, as they would be gathering availability on an often weekly basis, and trying to divide an often changing max number of hours across the week. The servers and bartenders didn’t like it, as often times the manager would miss news availability changes as there was no central way to submit them, it was all done by phone calls, texts, written notes, etc.
This meant I had to design a mobile app that would allow staff to submit availability in a single location by a certain day, and provide the managers a way to have hours and availability automatically put into the schedule, ideally having the app be smart enough to automatically disperse hours with the ability for manual overrides.
Research
- INTERVIEW
- Users
- DESIGN EXERCISES
- Whiteboarding
- Group Talking Sessions
- Comparative Analysis
Synthesis
- Content Strategy
- Workflows
- Information Architecture
- Clickable Prototypes
- A/B Testing
- Time-on-Task Analysis
The initial pass was hand drawn sketches of how the screens could be laid out. Knowing I was on a strict deadline, the choice was made to focus solely on the servers and bartenders for submitting time and managing their switching of shifts. I opted for this as this would provide me the most feedback from users and impact a larger portion of the user base.
As the design continued, I moved to Illustrator (Sketch, Adobe XD, and Figma were still awhile off from hitting the UX scene) and began creating more high-fidelity mockups so that I could get them into a clickable prototype using Marvel, which was essentially the precursor to InVision. This would allow me to test with the users and gain some feedback.
Testing was conducted with a large group of employees who had taken the initial survey. It became clear that employees wanted a way to shift between multiple jobs, as many of them would work at several of the different restaurants, and would want a way to see each schedule independently, as well as combined in a single view. They also found the ability to put their shifts up for grabs automatically on the app, vs having to call or text multiple people to be incredibly beneficial.
Using the data from the follow-up survey and notes taken from the user testing, I made the changes to the screens, showing multiple restaurants and focusing more on their ability to change shifts. This led to the final design that was presented at the thesis show.
