Bizimply's Time Off Calendar
Designed a high-impact feature for Bizimply, enhancing time-off management and eliminating holiday clashes. Read below and discover how the time off calendar made handling employee time off effortless.
Timeframe: Aug 2023 - Oct 2023. Tools: Figma, Miro
Problem
As a designer, I regularly conduct customers calls. During these calls I uncovered a prevalent issue with our time off management feature:
Managers lacked visibility into employee time off, leading to holiday clashes and scheduling issues, as they couldn't see co-worker's time off when approving requests.
I used an affinity diagram to help me organise and collate my research data with the aim of visualising the problem landscape.
By grouping the research data in the affinity diagram, I uncovered that there were two separate scenarios in which a manager encountered the problem. I created a flow diagram to visualise these.
The flow diagram helped me discover that managers were missing the context outlined above. I needed to design a solution to gives managers that missing information, so they can reach the desired outcome.
Design
My design approach started with a core objective for each flow identified:
Flow 1 - Enable managers to view an employee's time-off request in the context of other employees' time off.
Flow 2 - Provide managers with a centralised, clear visual overview of their all of their employees' time off.
For flow 1, I displayed the pending time off request on a calendar view in the pending time off request. The employee in question is pinned to the top for quick and easy comparison with other time off in the period.
For flow 2, I displayed employee time off in a calendar view. This was presented on a dashboard, so that all managers would see it before they went to create a schedule.
These were the first version designs. Over several design iterations, the key functionalities of the solution were investigated and their behaviours defined.
Validation
While designing the solution, I frequently presented designs in product workshops with my team twice a week. We rigorously reviewed and refined the designs together to arrive at the best solution for our customers.
These designs were then tested over countless customer calls, making several changes as a result.
Release
We quickly released a simplified calendar version to get customers extracting immediate value. Subsequently, we introduced the full-featured calendar in a series of iterative releases to our beta customers. These iterations were prioritised based on the value they provided.
Result
After the full release, customers provided very positive feedback. Customers mentioned much improved time off management and an enhanced understanding of employee time off.
Google Analytics events were set up to quantify usage insights, yielding the following results:
74% of our customer base had used the calendar in the first month.
66% of users who interacted with the calendar went on to approve or decline a record via the calendar, indicating a streamlined time off approval process.
Contact Me
Please note that the above is a summary. If you want to know more, don't hesitate to reach out!