Tibco Cloud Scheduling
Re-imagining the application scheduling experience on cloud management applications.
TIBCO Cloud Scheduling
The Challenge
TIBCO Cloud Integration (TCI) is a suite of tools that provide data replication and integration solution for cloud services. The TCI Team found that 30% of user entered schedules were erroneous, causing the customer support to correct these schedules. Me and the UX Researcher conducted tests and iterated on design based on inputs from the Product Managers and the Developers.
Role
I conducted user research, interaction design, testing and lead workshops for Product Managers and Developers.
Duration
May 2019 - August 2019
2 months
2 months
Team
1 Researcher
1 Product Manager
4 Developers
1 Product Manager
4 Developers
Tools
Sketch
Invision
UserTesting.com
Invision
UserTesting.com
1. Released Design
Sentence based scheduling
From our research, a sentence is quicker to read and parse for the users, reducing errors in scheduling.
My Proposed Design: Sentence with clickable words that can be edited using the dropdown menu.
Previous design: heavy & confusing layout for the users.
Contextual menu dropdowns
By hiding complicated scheduling interactions in simplified dropdown menus, user’s got a natural interaction flow to follow to create correct. schedules.
Contextual drop downs based on the portion of the sentence.
Released design reduced errors
on the user’s end by 15%
on the user’s end by 15%
In addition to reducing errors, the new design also improved time required to schedule by about 50%.
2. Research through Design
Understanding the challenge
To understand why user’s are creating erroneous schedules, I decided it was important to first check the standard scheduling interaction in famous applications like MacOS and Google Calendar.
Looking at the images below, it seems that TCI has similar idea to scheduling on these applications. But, I also saw that the scheduling visual experience is not consistent. I thought a more visual overhaul would be enough (as you will see, it wasn’t).
Scheduling as seen on MacOS
Scheduling as seen on Google Calendar mobile app.
Exciting scheduling screen as seen on existing TCI.
I tried some variations that were inspired from Google Calendar & iOS. These were supposed by visually easy to read.
Horizontally laying out the schedule options
Vertically laying out the options as on MacOS
Maybe adding a visual calendar will help with scheduling.
These variations were looking more and more complex. But, I decided to do some user tests on these to see if a visual redesign would help.
User Testing Concept No.1
With the UX Research Team, we devised 5 different test scenarios with varying degrees of complexity. 7 Participants went through the user tests on UserTesting.com.
The Research Team and I went through the test sessions together to bring out their pain points.The research insights we found are as follows:
I have omitted condifential data here.
Participants
7
Their Profession
Integration Engineers,
Dev Ops
Dev Ops
Their experience level
2-5 years
Pain Points
Confusing Options
Participants are confused due to the layout used for scheduling, often failing to complete the configuration.
Difficult Legibility
Participants had trouble interpreting the saved schedule through the layout.
Multiple UI widgets
Use of different types of widgets in one form is a cognitive load that is confusing the participants.
It was evident that a visual redesign of the screen won't reduce errors. The problem lies deep within how scheduling & errors have been interpreted.
I took a step back and reframed the challenge...
3. Reframing the challenge
How can scheduling be less confusing
and more efficient?
and more efficient?
If I take scheduling back to it's roots, when we want to schedule meetings with our colleagues, the quote below would be how we would schedule events.
Let's break down this sentence. This sentence has multiple data points like ‘recurring’, 'monday, , '20th May' which I have highlighted.
"Schedule the application, recurring
every monday and friday till 20th May."
It’s easy for a person to interpret these data points and quickly take a mental note of the schedule being discussed. A person can immediately interpret the sentence above and suggest tweaks to the schedule.
I tried to use such sentences in my concepts
Taking this human cognitive behavior in mind, I tried a very experimental prototype to test the usability of using sentences in scheduling user flow instead of UI elements.. Following GIF is an example of the prototype used for testing.
GIF Prototype of conversational scheduling in action.
User Testing Design No. 2
Since the idea was novel, I wanted to test this prototype with the help of our research team before showing it to the team. Having concrete test results will make it clear if I should pursue this direction or try a new one.
From our participants, 6/7 liked the new user flow for scheduling applications. The layout was refreshing, yet easy to use. I took these results to TCI's managers and developers and lead co-design sessions with them to refine the design to be more viable and feasible.
I have omitted condifential data here.
Participants
7
Their Profession
Integration Engineers,
Dev Ops
Dev Ops
Their experience level
2-5 years
Feedback
Confusing Options
Consistent options
Participants noted words and sentences make the configuration easier to understand and edit.
Difficult Legibility
Legible configuration
Textual schedule information is much more legible for participants.
Multiple UI widgets
Discoverable widgets
Participants quickly understood the contextual widgets that come up when clicking on a word.
4. Final Design
Sentence based scheduling
A sentence is quick to read and parse, so one can understand current scheduling faster and provide quick editing.
Variations of the scheduling showing different levels of complexity
My Proposed Design: Sentence with clickable words that can be edited using the dropdown menu.
Contextual menu dropdowns
By hiding complicated scheduling interactions in simplified dropdown menus, user’s got a natural interaction flow to follow to create correct. schedules.
Contextual drop downs based on the portion of the sentence.
Design Deliverables
Wireframes
Due to restrictions, I can't show all the wireframes from the final design.
Conversation scheduling with the most complex configuration possible
Scheduling form can be quickly read
Calendar drop down when changing a date
Contextual drop downs based on the portion of the sentence.
5. Take aways
What did I learn?
1
While creating a user centric design is what is expected off me, the design should be considerate of the business and engineering considerations as well.
2
I can experiment with the design space by proper collaboration with my team and sufficient testing to ensure the new concept is as good as the earlier design and then better.
What can I improve?
1
By implementing features like nested drop downs, it can lead to other problems like responsive design. Understanding the pros & cons of design decisions is key for long term product success.
2
In this project, I overlooked localization as TCI will be translated into multiple languages. Ensuring the design can work for different languages will be vital for it's success.
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TIBCO Cloud Scheduling
Re-imagined the application scheduling experience on cloud management applications.
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