An online scheduling system for Taiwan's medical industry.
UX/UI Design
AUG 2023 - DEC 2023
Shin-Yeh Chu
CareShift is an automated scheduling system for healthcare facilities in Taiwan. It aims to improve operational efficiency and workforce management by optimizing staff allocation and minimizing scheduling conflicts. It offers a solution designed to streamline and optimize scheduling procedures in medical facilities, addressing the challenges faced by the medical industry in Taiwan.
Taiwan's healthcare industry relies on manual scheduling processes, leading to inefficiencies and errors. An automated system is necessary to streamline communication, optimize resource allocation, and enhance managerial efficiency in scheduling shifts, exchanges, and days off.
The use of paper schedules for shift scheduling is inefficient and error-prone. This leads to inaccuracies, inconsistencies, additional manual labor, complicates locating staff during emergencies, and adds to the administrative workload.
We interviewed higher management and staff members to gain insight into their experiences with the shifting schedule system. Our goal was to identify design opportunities to enhance the user experience.
Following our analysis of the interview responses, we selected several crucial points to guide us in refining the solutions.
We began to work on the wireframes after we analyzed the pain points and understood their requirements. The goal is to turn our concepts into actual visual presentations to test our solutions.
Features for administrators only, such as schedule planning, day-off approval, and shift exchange approval, provide enhanced management and oversight capabilities.
Features for all users include shift exchange, schedule viewing, and day-off requests.
We designed this feature called Automated Scheduling to address the issue of inefficient and time-consuming manual paper schedule process. This feature automates the scheduling process by generating schedules automatically, eliminating the need for manual calculations. The system optimizes scheduling procedures, allowing organizations to allocate resources more efficiently, ensure compliance with labor laws, and minimize errors.
We have designed a new feature to simplify shift exchanges for our employees, making it more flexible and efficient. Our goal is to eliminate the inefficiency of manual processes by digitizing all shift exchange requests. Employees can now submit their requests online, thus doing away with the need for physical paperwork. Moreover, the system provides automated suggestions for available staff, which streamlines the process and promotes seamless operations.
In designing our scheduling system, we encountered a critical conflict regarding the enforcement of labor regulations, particularly the requirement for staff to have at least 11 hours of rest between shifts. The two different perspectives are whether we should provide flexibility for supervisors to add in shifts when there's less than 11 hours in between shifts or should we protect the rights and well-being of staff members.
The crucial lesson learned from this situation is the importance of adopting a user-centric approach while balancing all user needs. We realized that simply setting strict regulations could frustrate supervisors and hinder their ability to manage staffing efficiently. On the other hand, ignoring labor regulations could compromise the well-being and rights of staff members.
To tackle this, we empowered users by allowing them to toggle the 11-hour regulation within the system. Even when off, the system alerts supervisors of potential conflicts. This strategy ensures flexibility for supervisors while respecting staff rights.
This approach reflects our commitment to user-centric design and accommodating diverse user needs. It emphasizes the importance of engaging users, understanding their perspectives, and finding solutions that balance flexibility and compliance.
