OrangeWork Hub: Mobile App for On-Campus Job Schedule Management for Syracuse University

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The Syracuse University Food Service department currently relies on outdated pen-and-paper methods for managing student work schedules and Outlook mail for communication, making it challenging for students to balance their academic and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 This outdated system forces students to allocate time from their busy schedules to handle shift changes.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.

How might we improve the on-campus job scheduling?

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 co-workers and supervisors.

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.

Student's response

• Why do I have to manually track my shifts on paper?

• it’s hard to get timely updates about shift changes

• Why can’t 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

During user research, I discovered that one of the on-campus jobs "Residential Student Association" at Syracuse University uses a mobile app called "Subit Up" to streamline their job scheduling process.

Affinity Mapping

Based on user research findings, I created an affinity mapping to group and organize pain points into similar categorizations.

Design Iteration

My goal is to streamline the on-campus job scheduling process. I've made few iterations that allows students to view all the available shifts for each food station and with a click students can schedule their shift. Upcoming shifts allows students to swap or drop their shifts and update the co-workers and supervisors via in-app messaging.

1. In-app Messaging

2. Available Schedule

3. My Schedule

4. Swap / Drop
   
   

Design Systems