at-a-glance tool to manage the schedules of multiple technicians across timezones
Empowering schedulers to maximize their technicians’ efficiency by tracking daily progress and maximizing routing efficiency with our algorithm.
My role and contributions
Senior Product Designer
Team
Product Manager, Chelsea Hauer
Offshore Product Owner and developers
Project timeline
Redesign in 4 months
Outcome
Design was well received and used in new SaaS product
Methodology
Agile
Client
National single-home leasing and management company
Internal schedulers
End to end design
Systems thinking
Making large amounts of data digestible
Working within design system
Research
Data-informed design
High-fidelity design
Usability testing and shadowing
Stakeholder management
Client management
HIGHLIGHTED SKILLS
The ask
redesign an exiting tool
Users had to drag a scroll bar along the top of the screen to see the entirety of the calendar, which wasn’t intuitive and added extra time to the scheduler’s work flow.
The lack of color kept users from being able to understand how the day was progressing at a glance.
Duplicate appointments cluttered the UI and kept schedulers from being able to get a clear picture of the day’s schedule.
I challenged the development team to identify why some appointments were duplicated on the calendar.
CHALLENGES
design one tool for two distinct user groups
Our client has schedulers and our internal team has schedulers.
How might I solve for both user group’s pain points while creating a cohesive experience?
include a large amount of data on one single screen using current design system
Users have to visit many screens to finish a single task.
How might I display a large amount of information on the screen without overwhelming the user?
reduce learning curve for power users
Our client has schedulers and our internal team has schedulers use the tool I redesigned.
How can I use the old tool's design to make it easier to learn?
RESEARCH
user interviews
I interviewed 4 employees from our client’s scheduling team and 3 employees from our internal scheduling team. Our client’s employees had never been interviewed in this way before. I said “Why not ask?” The employees were happy to be involved and I was able to produce a better product because of their feedback.
Purpose
Understand challenges with the role in general.
Identify well-liked features of the current tool.
Collect user pain points and understand the root cause.
usage Analytics
I worked with my product owner and product manager to identify which features of the current tool were most and least used.
Purpose
Find out if the usage analytics tell the same story as user interviews.
I probed users to gain insight as to why some features were avoided and why some features were heavily relied on.
Design feedback sessions
I got feedback from schedulers during low, mid, and high fidelity design phases.
Purpose
Validate that the features we cut from the old tool wouldn’t be missed.
Present multiple designs to understand which designs met needs better.
Avoid investing too much design time on the wrong idea.
scheduler goals
I distilled the following insights from my user research.
fill the schedule
Fill their technician’s calendars to maximize how many jobs a technician can complete in a day. The more jobs completed, the more money is earned.
address issues quickly
If a technician misses their arrival window or takes longer than expected to check out of a job, the scheduler needs to “make it right” as quickly as possible.
Track techs across multiple time zones
For schedulers who live on the boarder of two time zones, or who cover the management of technicians on behalf of another schedule who is on PTO, it’s important to know which technician works in which time zone.
cover last minute pto
Life happens. So when a technician gets sick or has a family emergency, schedulers are responsible for rescheduling their work.
keep promise to customers
Home owners with maintenance requests often have to take time off of work to be home when the technician arrives. If the promised arrival window isn’t met, residents feel the pain of missing work and using precious PTO for no reason.
Constraints
limited to existing design system
The current design system dictated overall feeling of the UI including:
Color pallet
Text hierarchy
Labels
Buttons
Icons
i added to the design system
I designed new components for the design system that addressed the unique and necessary needs of this project, including:
Appointment cards
Horizontal timeline
Current time indicator
Color key
Toggle for map view/timeline view
DESIGN decisions
power to select the right technicians
The technicians a scheduler manages might vary from day to day.
A scheduler may manage the technicians in a different geographical area while their coworker is on PTO.
I added a toggle at the location level to allow schedulers to make selections quickly.
See details about a single technician’s day
Schedulers can see a map that shows the technician’s appointments and its status at a glance to ensure it’s efficiency or identify potential improvements.
I reused my design from the One Onsite app for the route map.
The addition of this feature reduced the number of screens a scheduler needed to visit and was highly valued by schedulers.
Flexible view
Schedulers wanted the option to have both panels open.
The flexibility of the system empowers each scheduler to do the job the way that suits them best.
The most important part of their job is the outcome— on-time technicians, efficient routes, quick response to mistakes.
include more information while reducing visual clutter
Each drive time, appointment, and block of availability has their own card.
The number of lines on the screen overwhelms the eye and doesn’t guide the user to the most important information.
Each card uses the same or similar color, which doesn’t help the schedule understand the state of things at a glance.
Before:
Drive time is included on the appointment card to reduce the number of lines and cards on the screen.
Additional white space helps the scheduler identify blocks of availability.
This solution is scannable and understandable at a glance.
After:
What’s most important to show on an appointment card?
Each appointment card contains
Drive time from last appointment to the next appointment
Address
checked out appointments
Card turns gray and fades to the background because schedulers rarely referred back to those jobs.
After checkout, the arrival window data point is replaced with the status upon checkout.
Was the job “completed” and is now ready to bill?
Is a “return trip needed” so that the technician can complete the job?
Before check in
The arrival time is most important for a scheduler to know at this point in time.
This information helps schedulers make good decisions
“Is there time to squeeze an additional job in before or after?”
“Does the resident know when to expect the technician at their house?”
After analyzing the insights from my user interviews, I decided which information to show on all cards, and which information to change based on job status.
add appointments easily
After hearing that users were forced to add new appointments on a completely different screen in the old tool, I added the ability to add new appointments to the calendar from this page by either clicking the [+ Add] button or by clicking an availability block on the calendar itself.
Track technician progress
I added “0/5 complete” underneath the technician’s name so that schedulers don’t have to count appointment cards.
future growth
The left menu leaves contains an icon that opens the technician filter panel.
In the near future, an icon will be added to open a panel that shows work orders or return trips that need scheduled.
Alphabetize by first name
Schedulers want to see technicians in alphabetical order by first name, even if that means different time zones are mixed up.
