WT & TG have been a staple softwares for TEAM Software since their formation in 1989. WT is a comprehensive ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system focused on financial and workforce management for North American cleaning/security contractors. TG is a workforce management and operational tool primarily focused on real-time attendance, scheduling, and service delivery, popular in international markets. Long story short, not a lot of design was put into their creation, and since the 90’s, small patches have been added but it was in need of a facelift. The reality is, a lot more goes into the redesign than just a facelift. We wanted to fix the pain points for our users, improve the usability, and design a new product that still feels familiar, and intuitive to our power users. Sounds simple enough, right?
The Legacy Product
Both WT and TG were built without a designer. They are powerhouses of the security and cleaning software, and the power users can fly through the product with only their keyboards. However, because there were no designers present for the first 20 years, engineers built everything to work the way they thought it should work. New users find it incredibly confusing, modern patterns don't exist, everything requires jumping between multiple screens and we've frankenstein'd this product together with features tacked on.
WT Schedule board. The old design on the left, modernized design on the right
TG Schedule board. The old design on the left, modernized design on the right
The Problem
WT and TG are entering the mid 2020's looking like a Windows 95 product. Companies are popping up yearly that are vieing for a piece of our business, and they are built with todays standards of design, and typical modern patterns that you'd expect to see in a modern platform.
The Solution Impact
Jumping ahead, the solution here is to create a modernized version of the schedule board. This includes building a contract page, the physical schedule board, the functionality that we learned is most sought after and helpful for moving the needle for our customers. They want faster, with less back and forth, and ultimately, more time back in their busy schedule to focus on what matters most, running their business. Below shows a before and after of both contract creation, and schedule filling. The left image is the before, the right is the after. But how we got there is the design journey I went on that I'll outline in the following sections.
TG Contract creation
TG Schedule creation
5x
8+ Hours
Saved per week
The Design Process
I won't go into too much detail here on the depth of the design process. I have another case study where I speak to the countless figjam boards, brain storming sessions, user discovery, interviews, rapid prototyping, co-creation with our users, and ultimately, our delivery. That can be found here if you're interested in reading more about it
Discover
Define
Design
Test
Deliver
a collage of figma sections outlining the discovery work just fro the schedule board creation. Between figjams and design whiteboarding, there was an unruly number of arrows drawn, stickies created, and highlights made.
Open Posts
Filling open posts isn’t as quick and easy as customers would like, meaning they’re spending more time on their schedule, filling open posts.
Overtime Pay
Similar to open posts, the lack of AI integration to easily find the most suitable candidate feels like we’re not keeping up with the industry. Discovering which employees are the most suitable is easier with other products.
Poor Usability
Feels like we are wasting time with redundant steps, a high program-specific-IQ is required to efficiently use WT, and overall creates hurdles that lead to poor overall usability.
Design Process
Like every good project, there's some design trade-offs that need to be made. Even with strong user insights and a clear understanding of pain points, solutions are shaped by business goals, legacy constraints, and the need to hit our deadlines quarter after quarter. Below are only some of the deliberate compromises that moved the product forward without losing sight of the user.
Legacy has color-coded symbols to mean 15 different things on the schedule card, it's what users look to immediately. We kept color-coded symbols in the same location, but made them WCAG compliant, and added iconography and badges to give even more info at a glace.
Simplicity isn't removing complexity, but rather organizing it when it appears. Adding a user role allowed for full customization of permissions and authorization, removing the redundancies of existing permissions, fixing visual clutter and streamlining worker management.
We want simple experiences for our users, but edge cases, power users, internal requirements, all add complexity.
Our Survey says 5 steps is ideal:
Our Interviews say:
Open shifts
Successful matches
Warnings & errors
Warnings & errors
Completed assignment
*start*
*cont*
*cont*
*cont*
"I feel lost here"
"There's just too many steps"
Not all signals agree, but strong decisions reconcile both. We reduced the steps down from 5 to 3 despite a neutral survey result. Fewer steps garnished the same results, and saved time.