Client
BuddyCompany
Role
Service Provider
Team
Cross-functional: product owner,
stakeholders and developers
Product Designer and Content Manager in BuddyCompanny
Skills
UI/UX design | Figma | Webflow | WordPress | Content Creation
Go to website
As the Lead Designer at BuddyCompany, I was responsible for
overseeing the end-to-end design process for a variety of digital products. This role required not only a deep understanding of user-centered design principles but also the ability to lead and collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless execution. I took ownership of conducting in-depth market and user research to inform my design strategies, ensuring that our solutions were data-driven and aligned with both user needs and business goals. Design Challenge The Buddy Company website faced issues related to confusing navigation and fragmented information. The Workforce App, used by the company's employees, lacked intuitive workflows and had a dated interface. My task was to address these challenges using a user-centric design approach.
Problem Statement
Traditional field service management involved extensive manual coordination, leading to inefficiencies, delays, and communication gaps between dispatchers and technicians. BuddyPro aimed to resolve these issues by providing a centralized platform where tasks could be managed end-to-end, from scheduling to completion. Key challenges included:
Ensuring Ease of Use for Field Technicians:
The platform needed to be intuitive for technicians with varying levels of digital literacy.
Optimizing Real-Time Communication: Enabling seamless communication and updates between field and office teams was essential to improve responsiveness.
Creating Customizable Reporting: Managers required a flexible reporting dashboard to monitor field metrics and performance indicators.
Goals
- Improve Task Discoverability Design an interface where users can easily browse and select relevant tasks based on time, location, and compensation.
- Simplify Navigation and Planning Provide both list and map views to support flexible task discovery and optimized routing.
- Enhance Task Clarity Make it easy to view key task details, including the type of service, distance, time slot, customer info, and description.
- Support Task Lifecycle Management Create interfaces for accepting/declining, starting, cancelling/rescheduling, and completing tasks, with reasons and notes.
- Facilitate Professional Documentation Enable Buddies to upload notes, photos, expenses, and mileage for accountability and support purposes.
Design Process: Product Design Thinking
Empathize: Understanding User Needs To gain insights into user pain points, I conducted user interviews and usability testing. I spoke with both internal stakeholders and end users to understand their primary struggles with the website and the app. Key insights revealed: Website users found the navigation unintuitive and content scattered. App users faced difficulties completing tasks efficiently, especially while on the go.
Define: Identifying Key Problems
After gathering qualitative and quantitative data, I synthesized the insights into the following problem statements:
How might we improve the website's navigation to ensure users can easily find relevant information?
How might we redesign the Workforce App to support seamless task management, particularly for users in motion?
Ideate: Exploring Solutions
I hosted brainstorming sessions with the team to explore potential solutions. We focused on:
Simplifying the website’s navigation and consolidating content.
Creating larger, more accessible buttons on the app for users who need quick interaction while multitasking.
Collaboration with Developers for Accessibility & Responsiveness:
Collaborating closely with developers, I ensured the platform was fully responsive for both mobile and desktop, meeting WCAG accessibility guidelines. Adjustments were made to improve color contrast, touch target sizes, and navigation to accommodate both the desktop dashboard and mobile needs of field technicians.
Testing & Iteration:
After completing the prototype, I led usability testing sessions with dispatchers and technicians to observe their interactions with the platform. Feedback helped identify areas for improvement, such as simplifying the task status update flow and refining notification alerts for critical tasks. Based on these insights, I iterated on the design to enhance clarity and reduce friction.
