MY ROLE
UX Research, UI Design, Front-End Development
TIMELINE
2020
Challenge
Level-One Managers at Sandia have a multitude of daily tasks to complete along with their long-term planning and other strategic efforts. Completing these day-to-day tasks can be a burden due to the multiple touch points required.
Objectives
Enable managers to "clear the decks" by centralizing day-to-day tasks and ensuring ease of completion.
Provide a staff roster that enables managers to easily connect with members of their team.
Enable greater engagement with staff members to improve coordination and reduce missed opportunities.
Research
User Interviews
Our team conducted in-depth interviews with managers across divisions to identify key challenges and workflows. Research spanned various seniority levels to create a comprehensive view of managerial needs and pain points.
Use Cases
Based on our research we determine several use cases for level-one manager usage of our new dashboard.
Connecting with staff - Help managers to get in contact with staff
Completing of recurring responsibilities - Ensuring daily and mundane tasks are handled (e.g. timesheet)
Locating staff - Help managers to quickly know the current location of staff members
Determining staff availability - Know who is available and when
Tracking staff performance - Provide insight into where employees are successful and where they may be struggling
Learning how to help staff - Help managers to quickly see opportunities where they can take action to help staff members
Design
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
After conducting user interviews, I transformed user research insights into initial wireframes using Balsamiq, exploring various layouts and content structures for the manager dashboard.
Above: Wireframe idea of a tabbed interface including an an "Overview" section. This section would present data and notifications to managers at a high level, and enable them to drill down.
Above: The "My People" section of the initial idea that presented employee information in more detail.
I presented the wireframes to a diversity of manager levels, iterating the design based on feedback while maintaining core dashboard concepts in the final version.
High Fidelity Prototypes
Once we had gathered a sufficient amount of feedback and finalized our wireframes, we created prototypes of the dashboard. I designed and tested high-fidelity prototypes with managers, validating design decisions and identifying most impactful features.
Above: "My People" manager dashboard landing screen
Above: Staff profile page with contact information, job details, accolades and ability to perform quick actions, such as schedule a meeting
Above: Accessing training-related sections of the tabbed interface where managers can take action directly from the dashboard
Above: Observing work anniversaries and staying on top of new hire check-ins were highly requested features of the dashboard
Above: Customization of the dashboard appearance and notifications
Results
After year 1 of usage, saved ~930 hours or ~$120k. After year 2, savings climbed to ~2,000 hours or ~$237k. To date, the manager dashboard has saved $400k total.
The following tasks showed a significant time savings after manager dashboard was implemented: Locate general staff (30 sec. time savings/user); Request training extensions (190 sec. time savings/user); Locate staff accolades (74 sec. time savings/user).
49% fewer tool jumps to locate staff information and 30% fewer tool jumps to take action on training notifications.