BluePrint Design System

A design system component for scheduling

I was responsible for creating a design system component to improve user experience for scheduling routine business tasks. In our business, users rely on schedules to run routine reports at precise intervals in the financial calendar in order to meet deadlines and fulfill business contracts. My task was to design a scheduling configuration component for use in our new financial platform, improving upon our legacy scheduler.

Context

Users needed to trust that their scheduled item will occur when they expect it to. Prior UI for schedule configuration was problematic because users couldn't tell what would happen during atypical calendar events, such as a holiday. I dug into this problem more, discovering that users want schedules to handle atypical calendar events differently, according to business needs tied to beginning and ends of months. My design for this component addressed the need for precise control of atypical event-handling and providing clarity on how the system would carry out an event, according to their configured choices. As a result, users felt they could trust their schedules and reported that their events occurred as they expected, which allowed them to gain back focus on their other responsibilities.

Project Summary

  1. Deliver the breadth of schedule configurations and business day logic that is meaningful to our user-base

  2. Represent the variety of complex options intuitively to promote user success

  3. Provide appropriate feedback for clarity of user selection

  4. Fit within the current scope for report scheduling context and be reusable across the platform in features planned for the future

Problems to solve

Legacy scheduler usability problems

The following shows a user facing uncertainty while configuring logic for her desired schedule.

Users needed to make selections that didn’t feel right for accomplishing what they needed. Users left wondering if they’re schedule was configured “right” and often returned to test the configuration before relying on it. This was time consuming and frustrating.

Solution

I addressed the legacy issues with a scheduling framework addressing users need to rely on schedules in order to stay accountable to the business. The following sections break down design choices which targeted usability and clarity for the user.

Radio button drill down

I used radio buttons for single select across the set of high level frequency options. This enabled the user to see all frequency options. Deeper configuration options for each frequency appear to the right in response to each frequency. This format enables the user to inspect all options quickly and decide which is right for their needs.

Multi-selection and visual clutter reduction

Our user base needed a way to select multiple days of the week at one time. I chose to use radio cards over other multi-select options to reduce visual clutter. This enabled users to toggle days “on” or “off” according to their desired schedule.

In-context description

Business logic needed to be incorporated into each type of frequency. Since scheduled items have different criteria for time constraints, such as whether the task needs to meet a deadline or needs to occur after final date to include all data in a timeframe.

Most importantly, users needed to know what would happen when the scheduled event falls on a holiday. Will it occur anyway? Occur the next day? Occur before the holiday?

I handled these nuances by exposing business day selection within the context of each frequency. I also eliminated confusing terms like “weekday”. As a result, users could determine exactly how their scheduled task will occur across possible scenarios (without having rely on testing them).

Impact

Users reported that the feeling of needing to check on schedules running appropriately went away. A consistent piece of feedback from internal users was having gained part of their day back. Also, support requests regarding scheduled items decreased, indicating that users could confidently configure schedules and rely on them.

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