UX Design | UX Research | Visual Design
A staff timesheet and scheduling app for the University of Hawaii at Manoa bookstore student employees.
Figma Link: Pocket Shifts: Employee Portal
UX Researcher, UX Designer
January 2023 - March 2023
UH Manoa Bookstore employees use several different applications to manage their timesheets, availability, and work schedule. The process is unorganized, inefficient, and confusing for their workers.
As a result, employee timesheets are often turned in late or incorrectly. This leads to budgeting issues and a lot of time wasted on fixing discrepancies.
One, centralized place for employees to clock in and out, view their work schedule, submit their timesheets, and communicate their availability, so that they are always organized, informed, and on time.
I conducted interviews and passed out surveys to the UH Manoa Bookstore supervisors and staff to understand their motivations, needs, and pain points when it comes to managing their timesheets, work shifts, and availability.
Employees use three different apps to view their work schedule, clock in and out, and submit timesheets. In order to submit timesheets, employees must manually copy and paste the hours recorded on App 2 to their timesheets on App 3. They also have to make sure that their hours on App 2 match what they were scheduled to work for on App 1. Any corrections to clock in/out times or timesheets is communicated via email.
Using multiple different apps to manage timesheets and availability is time-consuming and more likely to cause errors.
It’s easy to forget to clock in or clock out for work shifts and to submit timesheets at the end of each pay period.
Supervisors often receive incorrect timesheets, which are tedious to fix and can result in budgeting issues for the company.
It is difficult for employees to drop and trade shifts because they don’t know their coworkers’ availability.
46% of employees forget to clock in or clock out for their work shift at least once a week
84% of employees find that using multiple apps for work is inconvenient
100% of supervisors have to re-open at least one timesheet due to errors every time period
After I got a good idea of what my target audience was looking for, I started brainstorming the overall structure of the app and what features to include.
The main tasks are to clock in/out, manage work shifts, submit timesheets, edit availability, and send messages.
I met with 6 participants over video call to test my low-fidelity prototype and find areas of improvement.
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The final design addresses all the main pain points I collected during the user research phase and also applies the feedback I received from the usability testing.
Click through the prototype or see link here: Pocket Shifts High-Fidelity Prototype
These are all the features that directly address the four main pain points from my user research.
After implementing the changes and testing my prototype again with more participants, I got all positive feedback.
After three months of researching, interviewing users, brainstorming ideas, and iterating designs, I finally reached a final product that successfully accomplished my original project goal. However, like with all projects, there is always still more room to improve and expand!
The biggest challenge while designing the app was having to consider both the employee's and the supervisor's perspectives to make sure both their needs were being met. While the employees are ultimately the end users of the app, the supervisor's needs and opinions are equally as valuable because they are the ones managing the employees. When I got conflicting feedback from the employees and supervisors, I learned to come up with more ideas or present a compromise that could solve the issue on both sides.
