Crisis Response Center (2021), Capstone

Project Overview:

For my MIS Senior Capstone, I was the UX Design and Research Lead, and worked with the local Crisis Response Center (CRC) to create a platform for management and staff to schedule shifts, request-time off, view availability, and receive updates. The platform also encourages the users to communicate with each other, and see their assigned colleagues for a particular shift.

Problem Statement:

The Behavior Health Technicians (BHT) personnel at the Crisis Response Center (CRC) are scheduled on one of four shifts available, and the staff is 75% full-time and 25% part-time. With shifts being short on staff with the addition to staff calling-off, scheduling has been time consuming.

Challenges:

1. Efficiency and Flexibility:
• Accessing real-time information on available shifts and scheduling updates for planning
• Identifying current gaps for shift coverage need to be filled with staff or agency, and staff requesting to trade shifts
2. Communication and Coordination:
• A communication channels with managers to ensure clarity and responsiveness
• Shift coordination for patient care among the Behavioral Health Tech teams on-call
3. Effective Crisis Response and Patient Safety:
• Managing staff shortages efficiently to mitigate their impact during shifts
• Ensuring fully staffed shifts and addressing staff call-offs promptly for effective crisis response and patient safety

Design Process:

I use Design Thinking to solving this problem. To practice design thinking we followed the below process.

Discover Phase | Qualitative Research, Competitive Analysis

In Discovery, I reached out to the Crisis Response Center (CRC) to see if the team & I could talk to the staff to understand their pain-points and issues about shift scheduling and communication. Additionally, I also researched other existing employee scheduling platforms on the market for a competitor analysis.

Qualitative Research

Hosted a listening session (e.g. user interviews) with 2 Nurse Managers and 2 Behavioral Technicians to gain a better understanding of the people at Crisis Response Center (CRC). Based on their responses, here are the key insights presented below:

• When staff communicate for time-off requests or call-outs to management, it is through text (SMS), phone call, or e-mail
• Staff does not want to be called at odd hours of the day or in the night, every-day. Nor does management want to call staff at odd hours to find last minute coverage
• 75% of Shift Call-Outs, the Nurse Manager has to contact a Staffing Agency to fill coverage
• Nurse managers confirmed that using Excel spreadsheets were still the main method of scheduling shifts and staff
• When the shift schedule is posted, only names of staff are listed for the day and time period (unable to recognize skill-sets or designation)

Competitive Analysis

In order to get a understanding of how other employee scheduling and management software already exists in the market, I did a competitor analysis which consisted of direct and indirect competitors.

Only WhenIWork helps employers manage shift scheduling and have a communication platform between users. None of the existing software applications had tiered user access privilege levels (user and admin) but not (staff, manager, admin, or third party (e.g. staffing agency), which is actually the biggest problem I later identified in my research. Can we make the shift scheduling process more streamlined for the staff, managers, and the staffing agency?

Define Phase | Personas and Empathy Map

I created personas and an empathy map to create a realistic and reliable representation of key users of a staff scheduling platform. These personas along with an empathy map, keeps the user centered in the design throughout the project’s lifecycle.

Personas

After a listening session with the staff at the Crisis Response Center (CRC), I decided to cater the design to three main user cases:

1. Monica, a Nurse Manager

2. Jack, the Lead Behavioral Health Tech

3. AJ, a part-time Behavioral Health Tech, from the Staffing Agency

Here’s Monica, Jack, and AJ! These three users that encompass user audience of the staff at the Crisis Response Center (CRC) that would interact with a shift scheduling platform. With the age range of: 22–60, seeking a more transparent view of shift schedules, communication with managers and other staff members, to create a better staff shift experience and coverage during crisis situations.

Empathy Map

Next, I created an Empathy Map to visualize Sam, a Director of Staff at the Crisis Response Center (CRC). Empathy Maps represents the behavior and feelings of a user’s persona (Sam), creates a connection of empathy between the designer (myself) and the user I am designing for.

Focus: Sam is the Director at the Crisis Response Center (CRC) and manages the vast team of Behavior Health Technicians, Nurses, Patient Care Specialists, each with unique roles and responsibilities.

Goals: Sam needs to decided which time scheduling software to perform shift scheduling more efficiently, which will provide him more time to focus on operations and patient care.

Pain-Points:

1. Inadequate staffing levels, leading to a shortage of available employees
2. Unforeseen last-minute call-outs, disrupting the planned staffing schedule.
3. Insufficient staffing to handle emergencies effectively, resulting in potential harm at the CRC

Gains:

1. Implementation of a streamlined system for shift scheduling for staffing
2. Reduction of call-outs and shifts, comprehensive coverage of shifts, seamless operations
3. Delivery of the highest standard of care to patient care

Ideation Phase | Service Blueprint Diagrams

For the ideation phase of the project, I decided to create a Service Blueprint of the current staff scheduling process at the Crisis Response Center (CRC).

A Service Blueprint reflect the organization's perspective (e.g. the Crisis Response Center) which include frontstage actions, backstage actions, and support processes. This is important, because it helped me document how the Crisis Response Center (organization) creates the experience of scheduling staff. This Service Blueprint encompasses the steps involved in securing coverage for a vacant shift, including the necessity to reach out to both internal staff members and the staffing agency.

Below is the first initial version (v1) of Service Blueprint Diagram I created from from the manager's perspective and the backstage processes. It encompasses the steps involved in securing coverage for a vacant shift, including the necessity to reach out to both internal staff members and the staffing agency, and the manual approach (Excel) to employee scheduling.

Then I presented the first version of the Service Blueprint Diagram to Crisis Response Center (CRC) management team to receive feedback on. From the conversation, I learned that:

2. Digital and Physical Components:
• The scheduling process encompasses both digital tools such as Excel files and contact lists, as well as physical tools like a printed schedule. This highlights the necessity to integrating these tools to enhance the efficiency of managing shift call-outs.
3. Dependency on External Support:
• Backstage actions confirm the dependency on the staffing agency to fill call-out shifts, underscoring the reliance on external support for maintaining optimal staffing levels
• The support process from the staffing agency is a critical backstage element, recognizing the role of external users (staffing agency), within the design of the software scheduling platform

Drawing on the insights gained from the Crisis Response Center (CRC), I developed a second iteration of the Service Blueprint Map (v2) illustrating a manager's use of a software scheduling application, focused on securing coverage for an open shift.

• Dedicated Communication Channel: Enabling a primary communication hub between managers and staff. Reducing multi-channel communications (removing 1 Customer Action)
• Digital Integration: Digital Shift Schedule that is accessible across platform in real-time. Reducing the necessity for reaching out to determine staff availability, matching shifts, and manually updating the Excel file (removing 1 Customer Action and 2 Onstage Actions)
• Third-Party Access: Incorporating external entities such as the Staffing Agency to view a list of shifts requiring coverage from the Crisis Response Center in software scheduling application (1 Backstage and 1 Support Process)

This would reduce the time it takes a manager, at the Crisis Response Center (CRC) to update the schedule and fill a vacant shift from 2-4 hours manually to 30 minutes by leveraging a scheduling software application.

By creating the Service Blueprint it helped me understand the experience of staff scheduling and the process filling an open shift, which form the basis of the Minimal Viable Prototype (MVP) design.

Design Phase | Wireframes, Minimal Viable Prototype (MVP)

Transitioning to wireframing and creating a minimal viable prototype (MVP)

and followed the below steps in the design phase:

1. Low-fidelity wireframes with variations
2. Mid-fidelity wireframes
3. Final Design

Mid-fidelity Wireframes:

Staff Scheduling Application Navigation Experience

Frames 2 & 3, I wanted to make it simple for staff to know the details of their current and upcoming shifts at the Crisis Response Center (CRC), in Frame 2, it displays a list of upcoming shifts that the user is schedule for as well as in Frame 3 is a more “snapshot” of the next or current shift with additional information of who is also scheduled on the shift with them.

I incorporated the feedback from the initial listening session because as humans we build camaraderie with the people we spend the most time with. In the Crisis Response Center (CRC), operating hours are 24/7 to provide care, these staff members build connections with one another after long shifts.

Manager Application Navigation Experience

Hi-Fidelity Wireframes

Slide Deck

Slide Deck can be provided upon request, contact me for more information about the project.

Reflection