HotSchedules is a restaurant management software that helps managers create schedules and allows employees view and change their schedules online. The home page, part of the Essentials and Labor product, hasn't been redesigned for seven years providing users with a poor and outdated user experience. I was the sole designer on the project, collaborating closely with the product manager, product owner, and developers.
The research made it clear that users often rely on their mobile devices to check their schedule. It was confirmed by Google Analytics that showed that 63% of the users logged-in on their mobile device. The home page needed to be responsive.
As an hourly employee, when I’m off work, I want to have a control over my schedule and earnings, so that I know what I can do and when I can do it.
The storyboard helped me start the conversations with users and get their feedback on how accurate the scenario was. It also made it easier to build empathy from the stakeholders and team members.
Sara is relaxing at home when she gets a message from a friend saying that she will be in town for a day.
She nervously checks her schedule on her phone to find out she is scheduled to work that day.
Using HotSchedules, Sara releases her shift. She is hopeful that somebody will pick it up soon.
Later on that night, she gets a notification that her co-worker picked up her shift.
In the morning, she sees a notification that her manager approved the release.
Excited, she calls her friend to make plans together.
After the initial whiteboarding session, the wireframes were created to further think through ideas for the page layout. I started with wireframing the mobile experience. For the desktop, I created two different schedule design concepts. The list view was very similar to what users were used to. My intention for the second concept was to improve the readability of the schedule.
We have conducted a quantitative preference test in a form of online survey to determine which desktop design concept for the schedule is easier to read. 69% of the users who took the survey, thought that the calendar concept made it easier to digest the information. We have also facilitated in-person user tests that helped to pinpoint some usability issues such as difficulty finding the tab for the shift pickups.
I took everything that I've learned from early user tests and applied it to the second iteration. The next round of user tests was conducted with existing users on the mobile device. Responsiveness provided new mobile experience and it was important to test it with users. After that, I worked on getting the designs development-ready. I've created an implementation style guide to help the team understand the new design and streamline the process.
The main success metric for the project was decreased call volume to the customer care. The home page was also an important part of our basic product—Essentials. The success of the home page in the Essentials was measured by the number of users who converted from a free trial version to the paid subscription.
I collaborated with Lead Designer, Dan Newcomer, on creating new illustrations that would delight users and make their experiences more personable. Our goal was to come up with an overarching concept behind the illustrations, freshen-up and unify the way they looked, and create a symbolized Sketch library that can be imported into design files.
Since HotSchedules is a restaurant management software, we decided to use a restaurant theme as our main concept. Some wit and humor was added by using restaurant-related idioms or moments each restaurant worker can relate to, such as accidentally dropping a bottle. Bringing out the human aspect of service industry helped us create a more relatable product.