Mini Apps Finding and Managing

SaaS
HRMs
Frontend
Home page
Categorisation
Managing flow

About the Product

YOOV WORK is a All-in-one HR management system that integrates various functions. It helps business to streamline all HR tasks, from employee onboarding, scheduling, attendance, leave, to payroll.

Overview

There are various mini apps available on the Home page that helps users to accelerate and simplify their daily work. However, the presence of excessive mini apps with inefficient display and a poor mini app management experience poses challenges for users in utilizing these features.

Goals

Redesign the Home page to improve the overall user experience within this page, with a primary focus on accelerating the process of finding mini apps and improving experience of managing those mini apps.

Team and role

Harry Wong | Product Designer
- Responsible for the entire project from kick off to provide design solution

Marcus Kung | Product Design Manager
- Assign task
- Review design

Nicky Tam | Ausiness Analyst
- Create design ticket
- Confirm product requirements
- Review design

Project duration

8 days

Align business goal to user needs

Extensibility

The scope, goal, and objectives of this project were not initially defined explicitly from the beginning. In general, project requirements are created by Product Officers, focusing on user-centric content such as user needs and pain points. However, this project was created by a Business Analyst with specified design solutions. Upon reviewing the received design solutions, I observed a commonality among them: they all prioritize minimizing development burden but bring limited usability enhancements.

Identify the rationale of project requirement

I conducted a meeting with our Business Analyst to gain a better understanding of the business goals, refine the project requirements, and gather insights from user feedback, needs, and pain points associated with the design solutions. As a result, I am now able to evaluate which solutions have the potential to enhance the user experience.

Examples of identifying the rationale of requirement
Why revise the grouping approach of different apps?
“According to user feedbacks, the current display of the categorization method is somewhat chaotic, as the categories continuously expand downwards. This poses a challenge for company users who have a large number of mini apps and categories, making it difficult for them to find what they need.”
Insights: Classification and display issues
- Poor applet finding experience
- The more mini apps and categories, the worse mini apps browsing and searching experience
Why suggest IOS app grouping style pattern?
It seems that the mini apps have been effectively organized, users don’t need to continuously scroll through each mini app within their respective categories. The page also becomes much clearer and neater."
Insights: Invalid solution
Mini apps and user interactions are more centralized. Yet, the issues in finding and searching mini apps has not been improved. (Users need to repetitively open and close popovers to find the desired mini apps).

Balancing business needs and user needs

Through the meeting, I found the development timeline for this project is short. Despite this, our Business Analyst agreed to allocate more time for the user needs and solutions exploration after realizing that the specified design solution misalign with user needs.

During the meeting, it came to my attention that the development timeline for this project is short. However, after sharing my insights, our Business Analyst agreed to allocate more time for exploring user needs and better solutions.

User Research

Getting the core experience right

The usability issues provided by our Business Analyst were collected and integrated from internal users' complaints and feedback received from the Customer Service department over time. However, without a quantification of the feedback received, it becomes challenging to evaluate the severity of these issues and determine which usability issues should be prioritized.

Therefore, I interviewed several internal users to gather updated feedback.

"Can I remove all mini apps that are irrelevant to me?"
"The large number of mini apps on the Home page annoyed me."
"App icons looks similar, like decorations and serve no purpose to me."
”The way of editing "Frequently used" is complicated than I anticipated”
“I haven't used most of mini apps since I started working here.”
"I want to remove some mini apps displayed on the Home page."
”I wish to have more flexibility in editing the display of mini apps.”
“Categories for some mini apps are a bit different from what I expected.”
"Apps icon is not helping me differentiate them.”
"I hope to be able to find the mini apps I need easier."
"The flow of editing "Frequently used" is quite confusing."
"The event banner serves no purpose but takes up a lot of space."
"The flow of editing "Frequently used" is quite confusing."
"As a Junior Designer, many of the mini apps in categories such as HR, Finance, and Administration are irrelevant to me."
”I am unable to determine the function or destination of certain buttons and labels clearly, which requires me to spend some time exploring.”
"Finding for the one I need among numerous mini apps annoyed me."
"Some approval are only relevant to the management level, and for most regular employees, they just occupy screen space."
"Attendance clock-in are used by every employee on a daily basis. I wish to be able to access them effortlessly."
"There are only a few mini apps that I actually use, and some of them I only use once a month.”
"I can't distinguish mini apps just by viewing the app icons. In most cases, I have to look at the text below to identify the purpose.”
Updated user feedbacks

Identify key objectives that align business needs

After analysing those feedbacks, I integrated them with the usability issues provided by our Business Analyst. Given the constraints of the development timeline in the business context, I excluded some usability issues that worth addressing but not urgent, and some promising solutions but require a longer development time.

Following discussions with our Business Analyst and Design Manager, I have recommended adding the excluded discoveries to backlog for future consideration. In addition, I proposed three primary objectives that align our business for this revamp project.

Clear and hierarchical interface
Users face an increased cognitive load by inefficient categorization and display of numerous mini apps.
Access mini apps faster
Users felt struggle with finding and searching mini apps they need.
Improve feature adoption
Users face difficulties about editing or managing mini apps in Home page.

Revamp

Set the foundation for app structure

An effective categorization method is essential for users to easily find specific mini apps. Currently, the mini apps are only categorized as "Approval Management" and "Non-Approval Management."Based on the logic within the system and their purposes, I further categorised "Non-Approval Management" category into "System Tools" and "Approval Forms." This subdivision will help users navigate and locate the desired mini apps more efficiently.

New categorization of mini apps
Approval management
The system includes default modules that enable users to manage approvals they have submitted or received.
Pending
Done
Initiated
I received
System tools
Fixed and non-removable set of system default tools.
Clock in
Policies
Notice
Leave
Check-in
Payslips
Schedule
Interview
Approval forms
Created by administrators based on business needs. The more extensive the business operations, the greater the need for approval forms created.
Leave application
Swap shift request
Out of office application
Others

Enhance visual communication effectiveness

The communication problem arising from the mini app icons includes difficulties for users in recognizing and distinguishing between the different mini apps. For example, "System tools" and "Approval forms" are categorized separately, they may still appear visually similar, even using the same icon. Designing unique icons for each individual approval form within the given time constraints is not feasible.

To enhance the effectiveness of visual communication, I redesigned new sets of icons for "System tools" and "Approval management" at this stage.

New set of mini app icons
System tools
  • Emphasize visual differentiation to Approval forms
  • Improve the readability of icons
  • Enhance the relevance of icons to the function of them
Clock in
Notice
Policies
Leave
Check in
Payslips
Schedule
Interview
Approval management
  • Enhance consistency in icon style within categories
  • Improve the association with default System tools
Pending
Done
Initiated
I received

Clear and hierarchical structure

I divided the screen into two sections to create a basic structure. It also optimizes the screen layout for efficient one-handed usage and ensures that users can quickly access and manage their mini apps with ease:

The eye level of the upper part is dedicated to information display. It can be utilized to showcase relevant information that users may need to access less frequently.
The middle and lower parts of the screen are allocated to mini app management and mini apps for their daily use.
Origintal structure
New structure

Enhancing the effectiveness of categorization

The continuous stacking of different categories of mini apps in the original design has presented usability issues in browsing and navigating.

To solve the problem, I utilised tabs bar component to organize them and allow users to navigation between categories at the same level of hierarchy. As tabs can horizontally scroll, the UI can have as many tabs as needed.

Navigating in edge case

As the number and categories of mini apps continue to expand extensively, the tab bar may accumulate a large number of labels. In such cases, the horizontal scrolling approach may become inefficient.

With the context menu, users can effortlessly scroll through the category list and quickly jump to any category they want.

Optimizing apps searching experience

Categorization and naming decisions are made by administrators. We can’t expect their mental model to align with all users. This pose a challenge for some users when trying to identify the category to find specific mini apps.

To address this challenge, I have implemented a fuzzy search feature that enables users to find the desired mini app by name. Users can search apps even if they are uncertain about the exact name. Search results will display the relevant mini apps along with their associated categories, enhancing the learnability and helping users quickly locate the desired mini app.

Improve feature adoption

Based on the nature of the job and job grades, users often only utilize several specific mini apps out of the numerous available. A personalized "Frequently Used" feature can significantly accelerate users' daily access speed. Therefore, I have begun working on improving the adoption of this feature.

Existing issues
Lack of discoverability
First, "Frequently Used Apps" section lacks a corresponding title, leaving users unaware that the elements in this area are editable.

Second, the signified and signifier in the button for starting the editing process are misaligned. The symbol and name used do not effectively convey the purpose.
New solutions - An intuitive buttons
Maximizing accessibility
Considering that most users are non-tech savvy, a new button style has been added to differentiate it from other elements. The button now includes a label instead of a symbol, maximizing the effectiveness of visual communication.
New solutions - Offering tips

Intuitive user flow

In the original design, the editing process for the "Frequently Used" feature had several issues that impacted usability, including:

  • Confusing user flow
  • Excessive variations in page design within the flow
  • Inconsistent UI style
  • Insufficient feedback for user actions
  • Repeated names and descriptions
  • Small-sized buttons
  • Etc

To improve the overall usability and user experience of the editing process for the "Frequently Used" feature, I focused on the following design directions:

  1. 1. Linear flow: Implementing a more linear and intuitive flow to reduce confusion for users.
  2. Universal UI components: Applying common and basic UI components to ensure users can navigate through the flow more easily.
  3. Minimizing UI variations: Reducing excessive variations in UI design to provide a consistent experience within the flow.
  4. Clear UI feedback: Ensuring users receive clear and appropriate feedback for their actions, creating a more responsive and engaging experience.

A little self-reflection

Continual learning

As a product designer, I have only learned and designed a few icons during my university years. While they were acceptable at the time, they no longer meet my current standards for design. Therefore, redesigning a new set of 12 icons that align the existing branding, icons, and balancing usability was challenging to me.

I always holds high standards for myself and is committed to continual self-improvement, I consider it is an opportunities to enhance my skills and knowledge. As a designer who has studied design for five years and is a self-learner in UI/UX, I quickly identified the key concept of icon design and performed rapid iterations for each icons. Based on the feedbacks from Design Manager, I selected the most satisfying designs to further refine. This experience emphasized the importance of continuous learning, adaptability, and collaboration in creating high quality designs once again.