TIME APP REDESIGN
VIEW PROTOTYPE
Making time tracking easier for field workers
Clocking in and clocking out seems like a basic functionality for a time tracking application, but what if you could somehow make tasks involving time tracking easier?
Even though my conversations with most internal customer facing subject matter experts seemed to hint that the TAG mobile app was working flawlessly, I still felt I needed to dig a little deeper when I was tasked with redesigning the UI of the app.
THE CHALLENGE
There was an internal priority to update the aesthetics of the UI of the app, so the overall product could remain competitive in the marketplace with similar apps. While usability of the app didn’t seem to be an issue, I still needed to have the user research to back up many of my design decisions when I revised the UI.
Fortunately, the product manager gave me full support to conduct this research and let it drive my design decisions.
MY ROLE
I conducted research with internal SMEs, customers, and users of the app. This research fed directly into my design decisions when revising the UI. I worked collaboratively with the product owner and a front-end developer to validate the requirements and technical capabilities for the app.
THE RESEARCH
First thing I would like to note, is a majority of the feedback I found from my research of the app was that users did have a very positive experience with it.
However, like any design, there was room to make improvements. Here are the key takeaways I found for some potential improvements after meeting with:
4 Customer Service Reps  Learning curve for users to switch tasks |
2 Clients  Certain users have trouble reading the job sites and task codes |
1 Employee (user)  Reading text sometimes difficult |
Reviewed the Existing App Design
FIRST LOW-FIDELITY DESIGNS
USABILITY TESTING
Using medium-fidelity sketches I created for the app, the front-end developer and I did some internal usability testing with 2 users. Here’s what we found out and how I adjusted the designs from these tests:
1. There was some ambiguity to what the time on the first screen meant. It seemed that in both tests, the users wanted more clarity on what that time meant.
2. The one user was not familiar with the way to close the list, since she never was an iPhone user. I decided to add the back arrow in the high-fidelity prototype based on this observation.
3. Both users expected they needed to first select the “Switch Job/Task” button when changing a job location or selecting a new task. The original app design functioned this way, so it seemed to make sense to revert back to a similar workflow. I revised the user flow in the high-fidelity design to address this issue.
4. Based on information provided by the product owner, many of our users switch tasks frequently throughout their workday. Having the extra step of confirming a task switch seemed like it would be disruptive to many users’ workflow and current knowledge of the app. I decided to remove this, but still wanted to revisit how we could make the learnability of switching tasks easier for new users, based on our client interviews.
HIGH-FIDELITY USER FLOW
VIEW PROTOTYPE
MORE RESEARCH TO BE DONE
When I handed the designs off to the development team in September 2020, I did suggest ethnographic research in the field should be done to inform more design decisions. I did get enormous support for this research to be conducted before I left TAG in October 2020.
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