The Challenge
For hourly employees, visibility and access to the weekly shift schedule is key to ensuring two things: that enough hours are worked in a given period to make ends meet and that others are available to cover shifts when conflicts exist or life happens.
As a leader in shift swapping flexibility technology, Branch provides a strong mobile-first option for hourly employees and their employers to gain the visibility and access they need, both to manage the overall work schedule and employee paycheck options.
While Branch has a strong foundation to support the hourly employee, they believe there are opportunities to leverage their app to provide additional support for their users. They approached our team looking to explore features that might help them add value to the current app experience.
The Approach
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Competitive Audit
A competitive audit allowed us to explore and understand the best functions of the current Branch app, existing offerings and features from competitor applications, and opportunities that Branch might be able to pursue moving forward.
The current Branch app does offer robust self-service and messaging functionalities and interest free paycheck advance and these services have made Branch what it is today in the minds of its users. Because of that, an important consideration during the process was how to best position future updates, as abrupt or drastic changes might feel jarring for current users who are used to the current app functionality.
Kano Analysis
To better understand the direction Branch might go, A Kano analysis of low fidelity feature mockups was sent to current Branch users to help us understand how an they felt these potential updates to the app would add or detract from their overall experience within their typical workflow.
Feedback from the survey showed polarizing response, with some users intrigued by the addition of new features, while others were not interested in seeing Branch expand or change beyond its current state. We also noticed clear variance in feedback based on role—some features that distinctly benefit employees were met with overall ambivalence by managers and some manager-specific features seemed unimportant or even unnecessary to current employee users.
High Fidelity Wireframing
With this in mind, I created high-fidelity wireframes of key features concepted for specific user groups within the application to help illustrate how they might help Branch bring additional value to their existing user bases. These features were packaged into a an annotated wireframe set delivered to the client, along with a customer journey map showing a current user’s experience with the existing app and how future features might fit into that experience.
Next Steps
The employees and managers whose work revolves around hourly positions face some unique challenges that Branch has begun to solve for. Leveraging existing technology, data, and opportunity, the recommended changes could set Branch up to build on its supportive and flexible foundation and ultimately become a more meaningful part of the hourly employee’s experience.