Scheduling Web App
Next-gen machine learning tool, for automatically & efficiently scheduling
Role
Product Thinking, UX/UI Design, Dashboard Design
Client
Q-IT
Team
Gil Goldzweig, Roi Rahin, Myron Melekson
Year
Dec, 2019 / Aug, 2017
The Challenge
The everyday struggle to plan and coordinate business-meeting and find suitable locations for these activities to take place in. This coordination becomes a challenging task as increasingly noisy schedules turn planning into an endless process involving countless hours of back and forth communication.
In the modern world where so many options exist, large corporations, with many employees, struggle with overlapping work activities resulting in poor time management.
The Audience
The main target audience will be Working Professionals. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) defines the professional workforce to include all workers in “management, professional, and related occupations.”
Modern working professionals waste 5 hours/week scheduling 15 meetings/week
(according to Doodle’s study).
The reason for this choice is simple- the companies behind these professionals can afford our product, because it makes their employees more efficient, saving them time and money.
Research
Competition
The scheduling field has a lot of players, we conducted a research to identify our competitors and to realize what we could suggest in order to create a better scheduling experience.
Our main indirect competition is classic paper calendars and people simply remembering important events in their lives.
Our direct competitors can be divided into 3 types:
What people use today
Outlook and google calendar and email. Unlike these options, Q-Pro provides automated coordination with your friends, family, and coworkers, without the need for back & forth communication.
Established competition
Such as Doodle. We differ as we provide automation and a tool that learns and schedules, also removed irrelevant options automatically.
Emerging competition
Unlike X.ai, our product benefits from network effects. Q-Pro also doesn’t try to mimic human communication, and instead focuses its efforts on mutual efficiency and benefits.
Conclusion
Existing solutions only aid users, turning the fully manual process into a more aesthetically pleasing one.
The importance of a fully automated solution, compared to a simplified manual one, is left unanswered by our competitors, a critical error they will come to understand as the market adopts our solution. In later stages, Q-IT will use proprietary machine learning algorithms that provide a unique experience to each user.
The Solution
Q-Pro is a SAAS based time management tool. It is meant to provide users with a simplified event planning tool which drastically reduces the time it takes to coordinate activities and automates most of the background operations.
Time is money. Our customers understand this universal value which is why they will turn to our platform to help their business get more time out of their day.
Our product will allow the users pick preferences for an event, including the invitees, and then find the optimal time to set it up, considering all the variables.
The Process
The Platform
Working professionals spend most of their working time on their computer, there for we believe our core product should be a web app. It would meet them where they already are and provide the best experience for managing their business.
Later on we will also provide a mobile experience, enabling customers to be updated on their business status and perform actions on the go. We are designing our product such that users of Q-Pro can send events to non-users, through SMS or Email, and thus exposing them to our product.
The Persona
Gabi David
An IOS Team Leader at a medium size enterprise.
Super efficient, highly dedicated to her job, always on time, devoted to her team.
32 years old
IOS Team Leader
MIT graduate
Work at the company for 2 years
Goals & Needs
She’s a team leader, so, as a part of her role, Gabi conducts many meetings - both in and outside her team.
She started as Senior Developer at her current workplace and hoping to get further ahead over time.
Pain Points
The constant need to find a time that suits all participants in the meeting she arrange, and the amount of time and energy it takes really frustrates her.
Relevant Patterns Of Behavior
She’s all about efficiency and organization, love when everything happens on time.
Some would say she’s a workaholic - Always carry her laptop with her.
User Journey
Gabi is interesting in scheduling a kick-off meeting for the project her team will need to start soon.
Here are the actions she will perform:
If more than 30% of participants ask to reschedule - the app will offer Gabi a new meeting date.
User Flow & Key Features
Once we understand what the route that user goes through creates an event, we can break it down into key features and general flow.
Wireframes
The web app design will be in a dashboard layout.
The main entry point will be the Home screen which I believe has two main goals:
Informational (providing an overview of upcoming events and status) and Navigational (providing quick access to the app’s main areas and actions).
Now, once an event is scheduled, it will be displayed on the Events screen, and on Home screen to make sure the user remembers it and has quick access to the event information. The app would send a push notification with a reminder 30 minutes before the event and at the time it starts.
Home Screen
Since this is an overview screen, the user could see here the Upcoming Events (default display of 3), view and respond to Pending Events. Events are arranged chronologically, with the nearest event listed on the left. When there are more than three, the “View All” button appears and sends to an “Events” screen.
Editing
The editing options vary if the user is the creator of the event or an invitee.
In case that the user is the creator, there are full editing abilities (change/add participants, change time, urgency, location, change the event name and color).
If the user is an invitee the only editing action is to cancel participation in event.
All editing and changes actions may result a re-scheduling depending on the constraints.
Hover Modes
Side menu
Display user information and allows full navigation throughout the app.
Event Hover Mode
Display the participants list with attending status. Clicking on event - will open event pop up with the available editing options.
Create Event
The creation process will display as a pop-up, divide into three steps:
1. Event Info & Invitees
The first step of creating new event. In order to invite people the user will need to fill in email address or names (if this person has been invited before by the user). This is an auto-fill field.
After clicking on the “Set It Up” button- the app’s algorithm will process quickly the data in order to find the optimal event time options for all participants.
2. Choosing the Time
The app suggest two options. This is the default, in order not to over-complicate the user with to much choices.
If none of them fits, the user could use the “More Options” button.
3. Final Review
After choosing the time, the user could review the event details, still editable- but the invitations has already sent.
From here there are three options- the user could just close the pop up, add to calendar (outlook\gmail- according to user’s settings) or create another event.
UI Design
Side Menu
The menu opens sideways allowing easy navigation. This is what the menu will look like when Gabi is on the home screen.
Events Cards
Upcoming Events
Each event has it own color. When hovering on an event card the list of participants and their color coded statuses regarding to this meeting appears.
Pending Events
When the user is inviting to an event- Accept and Cancel buttons are added. As long as none of the options are selected - the user is set as “Pending”.
Calendar
The calendar provides a quick overview of events per month.
The colorful dots represents events. when the user pick a specific date, the events that are expected to take place on that day are listed below. clicking on one of them will open event pop up with the full details.
Home Screen
This is how all of the features we listed appear on the main screen:
Create Event Process
Gabi is interesting in creating an ASAP kick-off meeting for her team. Here are the steps she will go through:
This is how it will appear on the dashboard:
After she has completed the event creation process and added it to her calendar, the new event will be added to the dashboard in the “Upcoming Event” section, she will receive notifications about the invite status of the invitees.
If you’re interested - view the prototype here
Reflection
Measure Success
To measure the success of our web app in creating a better & efficient scheduling experience, there are some major variables:
Rate of event set through the app
Rate of approvals for pending events - will indicate good performance of the algorithm in terms of its user learning.
Rate of times users choose one of the first two time options given to them.
NPS - the amount of Q-Pro’s recommendations.
Additional Features
If the product will be able to gain a large user base, there are other features we can add in the future.
One of them could be the “Secretary feature” - allowing the user set up an event for someone else, or in someone's name.
Another key feature could be a video call integration - allowing the user to set a video event within the app.
Final Thoughts
The first, leaner version of this product was created back in 2017, under a tight deadline and using a design that relied primarily on google’s material design to save time. (if you curious - watch it here).
This year I decided to re-design it as a side project. My intention was to use the knowledge I have gained in the years since I worked in Q-IT, to create a more friendly and correct experience.
