When it comes to creating a schedule for 10 to 30 employees, I could only imagine how much never-ending communication goes into it. So to get a better idea of this task, I reached out to a couple local restaurants, and my previous shift manager in retail. They walked me through their current schedule system and pointed out their favorite parts and features, as well as some that need improving. Then I sat down with some of the employees, eagre to see if their struggles lined up or contrasted with their shift managers.
I organized what I learned onto a sticky note board.
I started sketching designs out on paper, making multiple versions of the main schedule screen. The name, date, and shift grid often stayed the same, while I played around with buttons and navigation bars. I wanted to keep everything as clear and concise as possible, but the stack of requested functions I received from research made this tricky.
In my early low fidelity designs, I continued to explore different navigation options to see how it felt moving from editing a schedule, to checking messages or managing requests.
Next I created a prototype and ran two rounds of usability studies with 4 users. I asked each of them to navigate through the website, create a shift for an employee and load a schedule template.
