Introduction

As part of the BrainStation curriculum, the UX and Web Development teams were invited to partake in a cross-disciplinary 24-hour hackathon by solving a design challenge. The design challenge was provided by our industry partner for the cohort, 7shifts. 7shifts is a SaaS company that provides restaurant management software that offers a multitude of features, such as employee scheduling, tip pooling, and more to businesses in the industry.

I was paired with two additional UX designers from my cohort, as well as two web developers for this industry project. Our challenge is outlined below in the project brief.

Project Brief

The primary goal of 7shifts, as per their company mission, is as follows:

"To simplify team management and improve performance for restaurants, freeing up time for managers to focus on serving their customers.”

However, the problems their customers currently faced were related to the hiring and retention phases of what they recognize as the restaurant employee lifecycle:

Problem Space

These problematic areas of focus were supported by their initial research they provided us:

• Average turnover rate in the restaurant industry is around 70% annually,
  however it has reached a new high of over 140% in 2022 (Forbes).

• There 70% more job vacancies compared to pre-pandemic times, and 3/4 employees plan to leave their job within the next year (National Restaurant Association).

With these data points in mind, they posited the primary design challenge to us in the form of a how might we question.

Initial How Might We?

"How might we help restaurants hire and retain employees?”

Secondary Research

Excited and energized, my team and I decided to kickstart our hackathon by conducting further secondary research to corroborate the initial data points provided. The UX team also felt it would be a good way to help the web development team with their understanding of the design process, and in addition, learn more about the problem space in a general manner as possible. Through our research, we uncovered four major issues pertaining to employee retention:

Prospective employees view jobs in the restaurant industry as mere stepping stones in their career, and not a job that they can see long term value in.

Restaurant jobs are finite

Lack of proper training

After discovering these additional key themes, we found that they all contributed to an overall theme of 'value' in some way. That is, restaurant employees do not see value in short lived job positions, especially positions where they are unable to move up in career advancement. Furthermore, employees feel they cannot provide proper value if they are insufficiently trained, and cannot build value if they aren't learning skills, making their own decisions, or feeling fulfilled in these roles. This common theme really helped us to reframe the initial how might we question and focus in on a solution.

Revised How Might We?

“How might we help restaurant managers make their staff feel more valued through
digital solutions, in order to improve employee retention?”

Persona

My team and I created a persona stemming from our secondary research and revised how might we question. The persona helped us define the user group that our solution and the 7shifts product targeted.

Click to enlarge

Product Audit

In order to develop an effective solution, we also found it essential to understanding 7shifts’ product thoroughly in addition to the research we found. Our team conducted a product audit in order to determine the current features that the software provides. This was important to conduct because it could help us identify any gaps in the product where a designed solution could potentially have the most impact.

7shifts’ product features. (Click to enlarge)

The core features of 7shifts’ product are:

• Employee Scheduling: create a schedule and assign shifts to employees.

• Tip Pooling: tip payout calculator that allows customizability and improves efficiency.

• Time-clocking: track and manage employee attendance.

• Task Management: create and assign tasks to get through work with visible results.

• Engagement: collect employee insights such as no shows, lates, and celebrate milestones like birthdays and employee of the month.

• Communication: internal messenger app to facilitate team communication.

• Hiring: post open job positions, while tracking and ranking job applicants.

• Manager Log Book: create notes for manager documentation and recordkeeping.

Competitive Analysis

We also competitively audited competing businesses against 7shifts to gain a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of rival businesses. One example we uncovered in our research is Toast, a company that offers restaurant management software in addition to point-of-sale (PoS) terminal services.

Due to time constraints, we found it difficult to analyze other competitors. However, we would definitely have looked at 2-3 competing businesses in order to get a better sense of the industry.

Value Proposition

After better understanding what 7shifts as a product offers, and gaining some insight into 7shifts’ competitors, we began ideating on solutions to accomplish two primary goals:

• expanded upon an existing 7shifts feature, or innovate a new solution.

• be relevant and address the problem statement and how might we question.

We felt that these two points were critical in finding a solution that would add value to the existing 7shifts product. In our brainstorming session, we came up with the feature of ‘Skillbuilding’.

Skillbuilding

Skillbuilding is a new feature that would be added to the existing range of 7shifts features. The feature would allow employees to request training and notify their managers through the 7shifts software, that is relevant to their interests or career path within the industry. This would accomplish a number of different things:

• It creates opportunities for employees to grow in their career.

• Build and foster their individual abilities, help employees see value, and offer employees the opportunity for promotions.

• Reduce feelings of stagnancy, and show employees the value of building their skills in the restaurant industry as a long term career.

• Focuses on the existing employees businesses already have, as it costs more to constantly hire new staff than train current ones.

Task Flow

In order to help visualize what the skillbuilding feature would look like, we created a task flow in FigJam that would help us build out a prototype, and also communicate to the web development team how the process would work from a functionality standpoint.

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Sketches

After establishing the task flow, my fellow UX designers and I created different variations of sketches, communicating and collaborating on our initial ideas. The below photos show different sets of the task flow contributed by each designer. The 7shifts media kit also provided some image samples of all of their product features which helped us create sketches that closely resembled the real life product visually.

We made some adjustments that are represented in our low fidelity wireframes, after discussion with our web developers. Iteration was a key learning theme here as we revised on the fly while still trying to keep true to our task flow and persona.

7shifts Branding Guidelines

We utilized the media kit from 7shifts website in order to adhere to their branding guidelines. However, we switched the typography from Apercu to Avenir due to Apercu being a licensed font, and it just wasn't sensible purchasing a font for the purposes of the hackathon. Avenir closely resembles the Apercu font that 7shifts utilizes in their branding. We provided the developers the colour palette and typography styles so that they could have them preset for their product buildout.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

After collecting assets and preparing text and colour styles, we created low fidelity wireframes to bring our task flow to life.

Manager dashboard page. Skillbuilding request showcased at the bottom.

Expanding Sarah’s request for a skillbuilding session.

Manager approves and discusses Sarah’s request with her.
Sarah can then book skillbuilding sessions in the employee scheduler.

Finally, we injected colour and styling into the appropriate areas, translating the low fidelity wireframes into a high fidelity product.

High Fidelity Wireframes

Key Learnings

Despite only having 24 hours to build out a product from end to end, this experience was extremely educational in working cross functionally with development teams. It helped me brush up on my HTML and CSS knowledge when trying to translate ideas from a UX into web development context. I also learned the importance of employing the right research tools in order to bring value to both the users and the business. Lastly, having a product that’s done in this scenario is better than attempting to have a product thats perfect!

Thanks for reading!