EasyWorkforce Software
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Role
Lead Product Designer | UX/UI Tools
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EasyWorkforce Software is a cloud-based SAAS company offering time and attendance as well as workforce management solutions across multiple devices to create happy workplaces.
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Overview
THE GOAL |
Be a 1-Stop-Shop Workforce Management Platform
Formerly known as EasyClocking, the company is rebranding and expanding its scope from solely time and attendance to a workforce management platform of independent products. The goal is to be the overall one-stop-shop in facilitating payroll, helping businesses communicate with their people, and enabling more efficient workplaces. |
THE CHALLENGE |
Build a 2.0 Platform scalable across multiple devices and facilitate user on-boarding
Work across teams to provide the best user experience and intuitive UI for the new 2.0 platform enabling scalable usage across web, mobile, tablet and time clocks. Improve the work that was already developed by engineers and also create new features, prioritizing time and effort. Provide a smooth transition for the current 10,000+ global clients from the existing 1.0 time and attendance product to the new platform. |
TEAM & ROLE |
Led all design efforts from UX Strategy to UI Prototypes, enabling a more structured process and efficient results.
Having had previous experience in structured environments and working collaboratively across-teams, I helped the company implement UX processes and influence a major company shift from engineering focused to product led and user-centered. I came in to a small product team of 4 where I was the sole UX/UI Designer. As a result, I wore multiple hats and embraced leadership. Working closely with the Senior Product Manager and the rest of my team, I coordinated and led all design efforts including: information architecture, user task flows, interactions, consistent UIs, implementation of a new style guide/design system, prototyping, and testing. |
The Process
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Learning and adapting through a non-linear process
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Coming into a company with a legacy product and the new underway, I adapted my user-centered design process to be more flexible around the company’s needs. Having a fresh pair of eyes, I started by understanding the users. I studied current customers and their user journeys to uncover their relationship with the company and their experiences using the 1.0 product.
I met with every department involved in the customer’s journey and documented the user flow during order processing, on-boarding, account management and technical support. |
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The results were long journeys with multiple routes and easy for the customer to get lost, confused or re-routed.
From these user flows, to sitting on on-boarding phone sessions, and reading customer feedbacks, I gathered data and created an affinity diagram focused on pain points. |
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These were the main take aways from the current 1.0 customers.
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USERS & AUDIENCE |
For the General Availability (GA) release of the new 2.0 platform, the focus was small to medium sized businesses ranging from diverse industries: public sectors to construction, health, food, and retail among others.
CHALLENGE: Making up the majority of the company’s current customers, these target users were already accustomed to the features available in the 1.0 product, so any new experiences needed to ultimately enhance what felt familiar. These are users looking to continue with simple, cost-efficient solutions that save them both time and money in organizing their company, managing their employees, and easing payroll.
For some industries such as construction, where users may be on the go, a strong emphasis in mobile-first was considered. |
MOSCOW PRIORITIZATIONBearing in mind the previous discoveries, I then worked with my team to make a list of the current features that had already been developed and those still pending. We started putting together a MOSCOW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won’t Have) to prioritize some of the features to be worked on (there were many!).
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My team had never actually done this type of documentation before, so putting it all on paper helped everyone visualize better the workload: what had been done and what was still pending. They were astonished to see how complex the platform was becoming.
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Getting Real with some Visuals
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REVIEW & TESTING
We then reviewed and tested internally some of the features already developed by engineering and discussed improvements to both the user experience and the UI.
We analyzed the number of clicks while navigating features, looked for intuitive user flows, clear content instructions, ease when interacting with functions / features and more. |
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We gathered at least 5 internal testers and had a pretty unanimous response:
100% of them asked for simplified user flows with less clicks and an interface that is easier to navigate. Too much flexibility and customization features were making the platform extremely complex and difficult for users to understand. So we took the "Less is More" approach, cutting back on excessive and unnecessary features, cleaning up any UI noise, and providing more objective actions for the user. |
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Working closely with the senior product manager as well as engineering, we determined what essentially could be changed and to what extent. The platform already had a robust structure developed in C#, Java, and was using React on the front-end to span across devices.
Due to the complexity of the platform and to maximize speed, we adapted designs to the overall layout engineering had coded. There were already a lot of elements and components trickling down the whole platform that would require tremendous time and effort from engineering to change. Despite that, there were numerous areas of improvement within the platform, including:
This case study provides a glimpse into some of these items, of which we constantly followed the cycle of iterating, designing, testing, and deploying. |
What's Next
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Bearing in mind the learnings taken from these initial steps, and despite all our challenges in finding the right way to work together and the flow of delivery, my team and I successfully set up a GAANT chart that tracked the progress of our product team along that of the developers. Following the GAANT, we worked on a more structured timeline in getting designs drafted, tested and deployed.
This proved to be invaluable when faced with the several UI deliveries ahead. |