Sole designer, UX research & design
Figma, FigJam, Miro, Whimsical, ChatGPT
Vineyard App Camp
How can we improve employee productivity?
Vineyard App Camp (VAC) partners with 400+ schools to teach 1000+ specialized classes by hiring non-traditional teachers.
Directors (VAC employees) use a SaaS platform with 8000+ teachers in the system to manage all logistics
My role
Tools
TEAM
1 product designer (me)
1 Non-technical co-founder
1 Engineering co-founder
The organization
In early 2024, employees were growing increasingly frustrated with the tooling required for their job. They wasted time struggling to find important information and guessing at what visual elements represented.
To address this, I led a complete transformation of the app, starting by identifying the root problems and overhauling workflows and app design.
The result was an easy-to-use experience, even for new and non-tech savvy employees.
“it's a little clunky, that's a nice way of putting it”
Live dashboard in Feb 2024
-20 steps
Over 20 steps were cut out of 3 workflows, including consolidating flows for a more seamless experience
39%
Percentage of time saved for sub assignment flow based off user interviews and usability testing
Understanding Directors’ tasks and struggles
Wasted time
“takes a minute to two minutes [to load], which might not seem like a lot of time, but when you're on a call with another Director it can be so cumbersome”
Clients lack trust in VAC
“feels very ancient and it feels a little bit nonprofessional”
”a lot of what we do is making sure we don't seem like a scam”
Disrupts workflow
“really challenging to not have to do things twice, you know I really try to optimize my time”
Employees are constantly dealing with a bug-riddled app that has no system feedback when things don’t go according to plan. In addition, they have to work extra hard to appear legitimate when reaching out to schools and potential teachers.
Potential improvements
A research-based redesign can help reduce cognitive load for employees while cutting down on task time
Reduce steps to save time
Reduce number of steps for each workflows and organize information in a more intuitive manner so users can find information easily
Increase trust in actions
Present appropriate feedback immediately when there are system errors and provide suggestions to recover from errors
Goals
Goal 1: Simplify workflows
Directors struggled to efficiently complete tasks due to a convoluted user flows and inconsistent app behavior. Different users used different flows to complete similar tasks, creating confusion in communication and training.
My goal was to simplify user flows to speed up training and improve efficiency.
Goal 2: Extract and organize important info
Directors struggled with finding important information on the page.
My goal was to organize and improve the information architecture related to their main tasks, so that they weren't wasting time clicking on multiple items before finding what they were looking for.
Goal 1
Simplify workflows
Simplify workflows
I identified 3 primary workflows every Director had in common that would make the biggest impact, consulting with stakeholders through my decision making.
Goal 1: Simplify workflows
Flow 1: Attendance check
Screenshots of original flow
- Attendance section too small to see content clearly and there’s no separator between content
- Teacher attendance is found under “Afterschool Weekly Calendar
- Director can’t update confirmation on their end, having to manually track attendance status
My changes allow users to find information and take action they expect and need without confusing navigation
Before
Users have to use a button to navigate to attendance checks that shows no indication attendance checks are part of the page
After
Directors can now update attendance status directly from the home page
Areas to improve user flow:
A: Eliminate extra step to view attendance
B: Allow Director to track teacher’s attendance correctly on platform
Goal 1: Simplify workflows
Flow 2: Assign substitutes
Requesting and assigning subs are broken into disjointed flows
Simplifying substitute assignment
I streamlined the 3 flows involved for substitute assignment ingo a single flow and reduced the overall process by over 10 steps.
A more readable sub requests page
Requesting and assigning subs are broken into disjointed flows
Before
The original page used text that was too small to read, had inconsistent us of font for links and text, an inefficient layout, and unclear actions.
After
Goal 1: Simplify workflows
Flow 3: Assign teachers
- Reduced flows by 2-9 steps (depending on decisions)
- Eliminated repetitive steps
Before
After
Teacher assignment entry point
Before
The original page used text that was too small to read, had inconsistent us of font for links and text, an inefficient layout, and unclear actions.
After
Goal 2
Extract and organize important information
Home page redesign
Added table view
Updated teacher profile view
A little more about my process...
Design iterations: home page
Concept testing new dashboard
Realized primary information from “Today” and “Sub requests” could be further extracted
Eliminated extra navigation step
First view after logging displays immediately actionable information
Design iterations: teacher/sub assigning options
Concept testing teacher assignment flows
Will the simplified flows cover everything employees need to accomplish their tasks?
Adding nearby teachers section
Half of the users mentioned distance as a primary factor in assigning permanent and substitute teachers
Design iterations: from card to table view for easier skimmability
Card view of attendance checks
The original version took up lots of screen space
Table view of attendance checks
Table rows allow data to be more easily scannable and leaves space for other sections like overview and tasks
Time saving
“[the new design] has interview notes, which right now I can’t access unless I open in a separate window, which again just takes more time”
Improve trust with clean UI
“this is super clean looking and nice and if I have to share my screen to show a school schedule, to my eyes it looks much more appealing”
Functional
“it has all the right information that I want to see”
“I love that the [student] feedback [section] is already there”
- Engineering team of 1
- Lack of consensus between stakeholders
- Limited time with users
I now have a better appreciation for collaborative and communicative teams. I also learned I really enjoy projects where I get to learn about a new type of job and industry and solving niche problem.
