Determining the Right Approach for NurseGrid’s Most-Requested Feature.
Using user-research to create an MVP that delighted users without overwhelming our small team.
Company
NurseGrid
Team
Product Managers x 2
Customer Success x 2
iOS Engineer x 1
Android Engineer x 1
QA x 1
Marketing Leadership x 1
My Role
Sr. Mobile Product Designer
Responsibilities
Prototyping, UI/UX Design, User Research
Tools
Figma, Principle, Sketchbooks, and Whiteboards
Platforms
iOS, Android
Year
2019
Project Goal
NurseGrid's users had been asking for a way to compare their schedule's with that of their colleagues in order to plan events while working together or on shared days off.
Challenges
A small team, a lack of formalized customer outreach, and our calendar UI was running low on real estate.
Results
67% increase in daily downloads (unpaid marketing).
4.9 star app rating in the App Store. 4.5 stars in Google Play.
My Impact
I created a nurse advisory group with my product manager to formalize what our marketing team had been hearing on social media and other outreach campaigns.
I synthesized the results of a survey along with app reviews from both marketplaces, Intercom feedback from our customer success team, and social media conversations to define the scope of the feature that met user expectations without overwhelming our small team.
The end result was well-received by nurses, and provided us with a path for enhancement.
Research & Exploration
Internal conversations focused on a feature that allowed a single nurse to compare their schedule with any number of colleagues. This would create complexity for our small design and engineering teams.
We formed a customer advisory group of 500 nurses and sent out a general survey to understand what they liked and disliked about the app, along with an open-text field to get their wishlist of features. We had a response rate of nearly 80%, and 197 nurses took the time to provide thoughtful ideas of what they'd like to see in the app.
I worked with our marketing and customer support teams to combine the findings of this survey with Intercom tickets, social media feedback, and reviews from the App Store and Play Store.
What we found was that when people mentioned comparing their schedule with their colleagues, it was mentioned in a one-to-one context over half of the time. This gave us a limited scope to launch an MVP, learn, adjust, and grow.
Design & Validation
Sketching is my favorite way to explore broader concepts and weigh their benefits and challenges with leadership and engineering.
I determined that the correct entry point for this feature was from the colleagues screen, rather than from the calendar view. This was perfect not only for the one-to-one comparison that we were working on for MVP, but also gave us room to grow into a multi-point comparison in the future with very little disruption to the workflow that we would be establishing.
Our calendar squares were already packed with information: pay days, holidays, shift time of day, worksite, and more. It was important to assess what mattered when comparing a schedule to limit the noise.
Once we were pretty close on the designs, I leveraged our Figma design systems to quickly produce tap-through prototypes for internal testing to reach consensus on the approach. I was even able to do some guerrilla testing when a nurse stopped in while in Portland for her honeymoon!
Final animated touches were prototyped in Principal, and the animation curves were communicated to engineering. Everything was ready to go.
Learnings
This feature was a resounding success. Downloads grew from 300 to 500 per day. We reached a 4.9-star rating in the App Store, and the reviews that mentioned calendar-comparison were glowing.
Some nurses noted their desire to compare with multiple colleagues; it's a good thing that we now had a great foundation to build from.
