Multiple Work Summaries
Giving secondary techs a way to log in their work without an architecture rebuild
Executive Summary
Primary Role:
UX/UI Designer
Timeframe:
1 week
I designed the solution for a gap that came directly from the Mobile 2.0 research.
Secondary techs and crew members had no way to log their own work on a job! A limitation that was cited repeatedly by users. 82% of technicians had already rated Work Summary as extremely or very useful, from a survey that was done, but that ability was limited to the Primary Tech only. Before I was brought onto the project, a PM and contract designer had already decided to surface multiple summaries within the mobile timeline instead of a dedicated section. When I joined, I cleaned up that mobile design and extended it to web, and due to timing and scope, a full architectural change wasn't doable, so I reused existing Timeline infrastructure, creating each summary as a tagged, filterable entry. I had to design across mobile and web in one week, in close collaboration with a Product Manager, Software Architect, and engineering team.
Industry
Field Service Software
Background
A gap that came directly out of the Mobile 2.0 research
One of the recurring findings from the Mobile 2.0 research was that secondary technicians and crew members had no way to add their own notes on a job; a limitation users brought up repeatedly through surveys and interviews. It was only limited for the primary tech to be able to write out their own notes within the work summary screen.
Mobile 2.0 addressed this by letting secondary technicians add their own work summaries directly within a work order. This raised a second question: how should those summaries show up on web?
The
Challenge
A problem that reflected on web
On mobile
On the original FieldEdge mobile app, secondary technicians didn't have a way to record important information on a job themselves; only the primary tech was able to write out a summary, which was a pain point because each technician had their own tasks to do, yet they were not able to document them within the app.
On web
Once mobile supported multiple work summaries per assignment, we needed to handle this view on the web. Which the web side of FieldEdge was for the office (Administrators) to keep track of the workorders/assignments. There was no existing data structure on web that could display more than one work summary. It would have been ideal for the web to have a section to display all technicians' work summaries, but due to the decision to add them to appear within the timeline on mobile, that was the route we had to take.
The Solution
What shipped on mobile, and what worked for web
Part 01 - Mobile
Secondary techs can now add their own summary
Within Mobile 2.0, any secondary tech or crew member assigned to a work order can add their own summary directly on the work order, closing the gap that had been flagged repeatedly in research. I had to update the design to make it cleaner and make the user's summary editable with the timeline.
From the point of view of the user, all other technicians working on the same work order. Their work summaries will appear right within the timeline!
Tradeoff: It would have been cleaner to add previews of the secondary tech's summary within the work summary screen, because it should all be in one place, but the summaries within the timeline was already built and due to scope the architecture rebuild.
Part 02 - Web
Surfaced through the Timeline with additional features
Web had no existing field built to hold more than one work summary per job. Rebuilding that structure wasn't feasible given how deeply it's tied into FieldEdge's architecture, so instead, each work summary coming from the secondary tech appears within the existing Timeline as a Note, with a "Work Summary" category tag applied so it's still clearly identifiable as one, reusing infrastructure that already existed rather than building something new from scratch.
On web, users such as the administrators can also edit or delete a work summary after it's added, and filter the Timeline by who created it and by "tag", making it easy to find a tech's notes on an assignment without scrolling through the timeline.
Tradeoff: This wasn't the first-choice solution. A dedicated summaries section on web would be cleaner but it shipped the feature without waiting on a larger architecture change, while keeping the data identifiable and accessible in the meantime.