Timegate Redesign
Timegate, now rebranded as Timegate+, is a comprehensive workforce management solution, designed specifically for industries with distributed workforces—such as cleaning, security, and facilities management—Timegate+ streamlines operations, enhances compliance, and boosts productivity. That is the elevator pitch at a high level, but there are many areas that were not originally created with a designer on the team. However, this endeavor is a first for our company as we are implementing the Product Operating Model (compliments of Marty Cagan) for the first time at WorkWave, making us the guinea pigs for this pilot-project. Below I will showcase some of the differences with the new POM trio, as well as the work we have completed up until now.
Role
Product
Platform(s)
Areas
Product Designer
Timegate
Web & Mobile
Design, Prototyping, Research
Empowered Teams
Cross-functional product teams, or in this case, the core trio (product manager, product designer, product engineer) own the problem and are empowered to find the solution. This trio is empowered to make the decisions on the outcomes, not the stakeholders or C-Suite.
Product Operating Model Pilot
WorkWave fell under new management as our entire C-Suite got shaken up. Naturally, this introduced some changes to how we operate, and in turn, a new way to organize product teams. The new leaders are trying the "POM" on this project as a test. If it works well, they may form more POM teams and change how WorkWave structures its products. Here is a short overview of the Product Operating Model and its main features.
Customer/Outcome Focus
Teams are driven by solving real customer problems and achieving business outcomes—not just delivering features. Getting in front of actual users, and building a relationship with them, is key for the success of the Product Model.
Product Designer
Greg Webster
Discovery & Delivery
Emphasizes continuous product discovery (validating ideas quickly with users via rapid prototypes and experiments) alongside delivery. Instead of quarterly, or even yearly releases, there’s a strong push to have small releases every two weeks.
Product Engineer
Dan E.
This Product trio (myself, Dan & Dan) have already begun our journey to redesign Timegates scheduling experience. Dan F. and Dan E. have lots of experience working with Timegate, and are aware of some of the pain points our customers probably experience. But the point of the POM isn’t to assume problems, create a backlog of features/stories that are defined by others (stakeholders), then create agile teams with limited say in what is built. We are the ones who are conducting user interviews, extrapolating data and discovering the true pain points of our users, then creating several prototypes to test with our users to determine the greatest outcome with our redesign. Currently, we have conducted a dozen user interviews, and have several prototypes to test. Below is a few snapshots of our journey thus far.
Product Manager
Dan F.
OKRs, OST’s, & Interviews
We started knowing that the scheduling experience wasn’t the greatest. We didn’t know How our users were scheduling, What their biggest issues were, Why they used Timegate the way they used Timegate, and Where they were spending the majority of their time scheduling. For our initial pass, we created some OKR’s that we thought would be great to see from our endeavors. and wanted to narrow this list down to 3 that we want to validate with our users. What we didn’t know, is that we ultimately would only keep 1 of these original 7…
Our original list of 7 proposed OKR’s before we spoke with our users - Taken from FigJam file
Next, we developed an Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) to clearly map our strategic direction and ensure alignment with our overarching objectives. OSTs are valuable tools for maintaining an open perspective, encouraging exploration of diverse and improved solutions to achieve the desired outcome. They also provide stakeholders with a transparent view of the high-level strategy and the main focus areas under consideration. For those unfamiliar with Opportunity Solution Trees, Teresa Torres offers an insightful and comprehensive overview here.
Desired Outcome: Improve scheduling efficiency
Our original opportunity solution tree (OST) showing the desired outcome as “Improve scheduling efficiency” and all the branches/ideas to achieve that goal
This brings us to our user interviews. We worked with our internal SME’s to collect names and emails of prospective users to interview and share prototypes with. I emailed over 30 of our Timegate users from over 15 different companies with a request for a 60 minute interview. I created a draft interview script with questions to ask and a few sticky notes of reminders for myself to run a successful interview. Our goal was to have 2 calls a week, for as long as we are designing. It would start with interviews to learn how the users use Timegate to schedule. This includes their pain points, their wants/desires, and what they already love about our product (so we don’t change something that already works well). After several weeks of interviews, we learned a lot. I mean, a lot. We narrowed down our OKR’s and focused in on 4 different ideas to prototype to improve the scheduling experience.
A sample of 3 of the user interviews, and their breakdowns in Figjam. I highlighted their goals, frustrations, and potential wins for each user. There’s also a link to the FireFlies.ai meeting link
From these user interviews, using AI tools like Fireflies, notebookLM, and Gemini, we were able to extract exactly what features were mentioned the most, and where we should be putting our focus to get the most benefit to our users. Next on the AI front was using rapid prototyping tools, in our companies case, that’s Bolt and Figma Make.
I love prototyping, and am very excited to try the new AI tools to help rapidly create working prototypes with a few prompts. I won’t get into my personal beliefs and feelings toward AI, as I would be typing for an hour, but I am like a kid in a candy store who’s aware of the cavities that will form if he isn’t smart. Anyway, this leads us to the prototypes.
Prototypes
Contract Times
One of the ways a user can create a schedule right now is through a “Contract Times” page. This page has no copy/paste or bulk editing, two things that our user interviews revealed as a pain point. My proposed plan has a modern UI, utilizes copy/paste, and allows to bulk edit any field within the contract. The scheduling efficiency has increased, and users are able to create a contract in half the time, which is a huge savings for our users that spend the bulk of their day creating/editing contracts.
The existing Timegate contract times page. Takes over 60 seconds to create half of a schedule for a day
Next Steps
My prototype to modernize the workflow of creating a schedule. Can be done in easily half the time.
Site View
The site view is another way users can visualize and edit their existing schedule that’s been contracted. There’s a similar sentiment with the site view, users describe pain points in a lack of bulk editing, copy/paste, and a rigid scheduling experience that wastes time. My proposed prototype is an efficient update to their experience, giving them schedule creation with less clicks. I added bulk editing capabilities, copy & paste, drag & drop, modals instead of new screens, and worked on adding an employee side sheet that shows which employees are available to work, their current workload, and credentials. It’s faster, sleeker, and more efficient.
As I’m writing this I am working on the next steps which include more rounds of interviews, and converging on prototypes to get the best product out to our customers. Our belief is that rapid prototyping and frequent shipping of features will lead to happier customers and better sales for our products. I’ll keep you posted!
The existing Timegate “Site View”. Slow to create shifts, requires leaving the page, and multiple clicks to do simple actions
My prototype to really increase efficiency, adding bulk editing, copy/paste, drag & drop, as well as using modals instead of new pages