OrangeWork Hub
A mobile app designed to streamline on-campus job management for students at Syracuse University. The project aimed to address the inefficiencies and challenges that students faced with the existing paper-based system for scheduling and managing shifts.
Role
Product Designer and UX Researcher
Tools
Figma, FigJam
Duration
16 Weeks
Problem Statement
The Syracuse University Food Service department currently relies on outdated pen-and-paper methods for managing student work schedules and Outlook mail for communication, making it challenging for students to balance their academic and work commitments. To swap or drop shifts, students must meet with a supervisor in person, which is often inconvenient and time-consuming, especially when supervisors are unavailable. This outdated system forces students to allocate time from their busy schedules to handle shift changes.
Goal
During the kickoff meeting, I collaborated with the professor to streamline the on-campus job scheduling, swapping, and dropping shift process.
Increase Scheduling Efficiency: Streamline the scheduling process to reduce time and effort for both students and supervisors.
Enhance Communications: Improve communication between student workers and supervisors to ensure timely updates and reduce missed shifts.
Improve the overall work experience for student workers by making it easier to manage their work schedules and balance academic commitments.
Solution
Schedule Availability
User research and interviews revealed students faced difficulties in finding the available shifts in real time. The "All Shift" tab allows students to view all the available shifts, with a single "Schedule" click, and the shift is all yours.
Swap / Drop Shifts
No more meeting supervisors in person to swap or drop their shifts. Now, with a few clicks, students can swap or drop their upcoming shifts.
In-app messaging
Drop/swap actions allow students to send a message to their supervisor.
Research
I shared a survey with my university students to gather their experience of on-campus job scheduling, shift swap/drop, and communication with supervisors.
Manual Scheduling: 40% of students reported difficulties with the current scheduling method.
Communication Delays: 30% of students experienced delays in receiving important updates.
Shift Flexibility: 30% of students found it challenging to swap or drop shifts.
In addition to surveys, I spoke with co-workers to understand how they were feeling about the current on-campus job scheduling process and pain points. Research findings:
Manual Scheduling: The current pen-and-paper method for scheduling shifts was time-consuming and prone to errors.
Inefficient Communication: Reliance on Outlook mail and in-person communication led to missed messages and delayed updates.
Lack of flexibility: Students found it difficult to swap or drop shifts, leading to increased stress and conflicts.
Methods
Conducted 5 user interviews with random students to get a clear outline of their pain points and identify their preferences. It showed students faced significant challenges with the existing job management system and encountered difficulties with scheduling shifts, managing shift changes, and maintaining effective communication with co-workers.
Participant response
Why do I have to manually track my shifts on paper?
itâs hard to get timely updates about shift changes
Why canât I easily swap or drop shifts with my coworkers?
Supervisors take a lot of time to manually adjust schedules, especially when someone needs to change a shift.
Competitor Analysis
Affinity Mapping
Based on user research findings, I created an affinity mapping to group and organize pain points into similar categorizations.
Design Exploration
Final Designs
Our design goal is to transform the old-fashioned on-campus job scheduling process into an app that lists all the possible available shifts for each station and streamlines the process of communicating with supervisors and co-workers.
Search Available Shifts
Our design goal is to transform the old-fashioned on-campus job scheduling process into an app that lists all the possible available shifts for each station and streamlines the process of communicating with supervisors and co-workers.
Swap / Drop Shifts
No more meeting supervisors in person to swap or drop their shifts. Now, students can swap or drop their upcoming shifts with a few clicks.
Dashboard
A quick glimse of an upcoming shifts and calender with list of available shifts to schedule based on their availability.
