RotaGeek Employee Mobile App
- Role
- Product Designer
- Platform
- iOS/Android
- Timeline
- 6 months
About
RotaGeek is a workforce management software to improve productivity, profitability, and employee happiness. It's web platform is loved by store managers for it's powerful and easy-to-use scheduling tools. However, the experience for the much larger user base of store employees was not delivering the same quality experience.
So we set out to improve the process for common daily tasks, such as clocking in/out of shifts, requesting leave, and submitting timesheets. After speaking with some of our top clients we came to the conclusion that a bespoke mobile app tool would give us the clearest path to achieving the best experience for these employees.
Challenges
- How could we adapt current features for new mobile form factor?
- How could we easily support a wide range of platforms and devices?
- How could we leverage new technology to improve existing workflows?
Big thoughts about small things
To explore the solution space I conducted market and user research to explore similar product offerings on the market. Combining the strongest design aspects of industry leading calendar based apps and task management apps to form the foundation of our design language.
Working as a part of the product and design team, I created wireframes and high-fidelity designs in Figma which were reviewed in collaboration with the development team to validate technology choices and plan out sprint work.
Leveraging new technology
In conjunction with engineers I explored new technologies that would help us maximise our output for mobile development, without slowing down our regular web development. We decided to build with React Native, which allowed us to leverage our existing skills to support any iOS and Android device.
After finalising the designs for the initial screens, I created a semi-functional prototype in React Native (a first time thing for me) that the developers could build on, to ensure that the implemented user interface matched the design concepts and best adapted to the actual devices form factor.
In store trial runs
With the help of our amazing Customer Success team I approached five of our major customers with whom we had a great relationship. They agreed to run a limited in-store trials of the new mobile app so we could gather data and feedback from practical day-to-day usage.
The trials were a major hit with most of the companies and employees. But we did discover that some of our clients were averse to the idea of allowing employees access their phones while on store premises. This lead us to develop a secondary product offering of an in-store tablet-based kiosk app.
Measuring the impact
The employee mobile app was rolled out to all clients and is now a key part of the RotaGeek offering. Having received a rating of 4.8 stars on the Apple App Store, and 50k+ downloads on the Google Play Store as of this writing.
The tablet kiosk app was provided to select clients at an additional cost resulting in an average yearly revenue increased of 1.2x per user. It was also instrumental in landing several new clients in the retail sector in the following years.