Optimising Leave Management
for Seamless Rostering
Summary
This project simplifies leave management for mine sites, improving visibility and tracking for both employees and contractors. By replacing paper-based systems, it enhances efficiency and ensures clear communication of leave statuses and actions.
Increased Transparency
Users gain clear visibility into leave request statuses, improving tracking and reducing confusion.
Users gain clear visibility into leave request statuses, improving tracking and reducing confusion.
Enhanced Efficiency
Streamlined processes make leave management quicker and more reliable compared to traditional spreadsheets.
Streamlined processes make leave management quicker and more reliable compared to traditional spreadsheets.
Improved Decision-Making
Accessible, clear information empowers users to make quick, informed decisions and actions.
Accessible, clear information empowers users to make quick, informed decisions and actions.
Background
Leave management stands as a vital component within the rostering system for mine sites. The process involves many variables and must seamlessly handle changes that may occur at any given time.
Requirement
The system must efficiently manage leave and coverage requests for both internal employees and external contractors, addressing the consequences effectively when changes occur.
Challenges
Managing leave for mine site workers is complicated as the whole process involves numerous entities, relationships, and status changes. The primary hurdle lies in visualising the workflow in a way that is intuitive for users, making it easy for them to navigate and initiate changes. The UI must effectively communicate the status of current leave requests and the outcomes of users' intended actions.
User Interview
We conducted interviews with numerous mine site workers and contractors to grasp the intricacies of leave management on site. Currently, leave management relies heavily on paper-based rosters, spreadsheets, and requests are typically communicated through texts and phone calls. We identified several pain points that require attention:
User Pain Points☹️
Difficult to update and keep track of the leave status.
Time consuming to maintain paper-based and spreadsheet records, and are prone to manual mistakes.
No visibility on the leave request status.
No visibility on on the qualification and compliance of external backfill workers.
Concept Development & Validation
Design Goal
Build an intuitive leave management system that reduces manual errors, provides clear leave status visibility, and simplifies decision-making.
Clear visibility: Keep users informed on the current status of leave requests.
Informed Actions: Provide all necessary information for users to take timely actions.
Enhance Efficiency: Manage leave faster than with spreadsheets.
Match between the system and the real world 💻
During user research , we spent quite a lot of time to understand how leave management works in mine sites. We learned the workflow and logics, and a few concepts and we would like to apply to our design.
Leave Request Status
When a leave request is created, the initial status is pending and awaits supervisors to approve or reject. The supervisors can choose to approve the request with or without backfills.
Leave Coverage
Both employees and external contractors can opt in to cover a leave. Supervisors can choose to select candidates internally or send out coverage requests to contractors. There are two factors that needs to be taken into consideration: worker's qualifications and availability.
Cope with Changes
The system needs to cope with modifications and changes alone the way. Users might cancel a leave request or change the dates. Once the changes occurs, the UI needs to inform all users involved and provide information on how they can respond.
Provide visibility of system status to all users involved 👁️
The system should keep all stakeholders informed about current leave request status and any changes occurred. They should know what's going on and any actions they can take.
The balance between recognition and recall 🧠
There are many information and actions required from users who involved. The challenge is how to present and organise those input interfaces and workflows. We've tried:
Showing all options and actions on the same page
Good: efficient to use; less clicks; sense of control.
Bad: increase user's cognitive load by presenting too much information on one page; error-prone.
Bad: increase user's cognitive load by presenting too much information on one page; error-prone.
It's efficient to show all options, but too much info increases users' cognitive load
Break it down into steps, each step requires only one or few actions
Good: easy to use; reduce user's cognitive load by presenting only necessary information.
Bad: too many clicks.
Bad: too many clicks.
Breaking it down into steps is easy to follow and use, but too many clicks slow the process
Results
Leave Management Result Demo
Future Development & Takeaways
Future developments for the leave management system focus on smarter workflows and seamless coordination. By integrating real-time interactions, predictive analysis and intelligent decision-making, the system can further simplify leave and backfill management, reducing manual effort and enhancing efficiency.
Key areas for improvement include:
Key areas for improvement include:
Interactive Workflow Visualisation🗓️
Improve the stepper design to clearly show users their current position in the leave request process. Allow easy navigation to review completed steps or preview upcoming ones, ensuring clarity and control throughout the workflow.
Contextual Tooltips and Guidance 💡
Add in-app guidance with context-sensitive tooltips and step-by-step wizards to assist new users in navigating complex workflows.
What I've Learned👩🏻🏫
Storytelling Skills for design decisions
When doing design reviews with stakeholders and developers, it's very handy to apply "before and after" comparison and focus on the improvement the new design will bring. Include the consideration and usability principles to make the augments more compelling.
Providing instant feedback
When selecting leave start & end dates, user's feedback is that they would like to know how many shifts / hours are within the selected time frame while choosing the dates.
Pop-up calendar temporarily covers other fields, making them not visible
We added a calculator to the bottom of datepicker to provide instant feedback. Users can validate their selection before leaving the datepicker and save time for clicking the datepicker to adjust.
The new design shows instant calculation of total shift and hours to enhance usability
From Chaos to Consistency:
Building a Design System That Delivers
Redesigning Navigation
for a Better Defect Tracking Experience
Contact
Let's Connect
Have questions or want to chat about my work? Feel free to reach out to me.
I’d love to hear from you! 😊
I’d love to hear from you! 😊
