2024
A 0-1 product redesign built to support low-digital literacy field staff working constantly on the move.
TL;DR: The Numbers
Setting the Stage
It needed more than a modern UI.
It needed a mental model shift.
Discovery & Problem Framing
I combined:
Stakeholder discussions
Field surveys
Usability testing on existing flows
Competitive analysis of similar FSM tools
The focus was on how work happens in motion, not in ideal conditions.
Who are we building for?
Primary Users
Field sales & service representatives
Secondary stakeholders
Management teams tracking performance and reimbursements
IT teams supporting tooling and integrations
Design decisions intentionally optimized for primary users first, because every inefficiency here compounded downstream.
Problem
For field staff with low digital literacy, high movement, and little time to think, this created real friction:
For on-ground workers, this created:
High cognitive Load, especially for users with low digital literacy
Unclear hierarchy, forcing users to translate jobs to actions
Slow Navigation, with common actions buried across multiple steps.
Inefficiency during travel, sunlight, and unstable physical environments
What I learnt (Key Insights)
Field staff don’t browse menus, they execute what’s next.
The old interface forced them to map real-world tasks to abstract buttons.
Task completion and expense logging are the backbone of the job.
Optimizing these would yield the biggest impact, fastest.
Years of muscle memory meant a radical reinvention would slow adoption.
The redesign had to feel evolved, not alien.
Movement, sunlight, and low digital literacy meant the interface had to do more work so the user didn’t have to.
What the data showed
Early research made the gaps very clear:
80%
of users found navigation too complex
30%
could discovera feature on the first attempt
90%
explicitly asked for a more mobile-friendly experience
80%
struggled due to language and contextual clarity
Note: We interviewed 30 people for this project.
This wasn’t about missing features.
It was about how information was structured and surfaced.
The Design Strategy
Key Moves:
Keep the familiar tile structure (respect muscle memory)
Introduce cards for clarity and contextual guidance
Push secondary functions into L2/L3 layers
Surface only what matters right now
Add spatial cues to reduce guesswork
Reduce tap count for high-frequency flows
Redesign Highlights
For on-ground staff, completing a task isn’t a “feature”, it’s the job.
But in the old experience, every task looked the same. There was no sense of priority, location, or status. Users had to stop, scan, and mentally map their real-world situation to the UI before taking action.
For a workforce constantly on the move, this created friction:
High cognitive load, especially for users with low digital literacy
Unclear task states, forcing users to remember what was started, pending, or overdue
Hidden primary actions, with check-in and updates buried behind multiple steps
No spatial context, making it harder to orient tasks in the real world
Before
Identical tiles made task states impossible to scan
No sense of where tasks were in the real world
Check-in buried behind menus
Multi-step forms interrupted momentum
After
Map became the anchor, location-based tasks became intuitive
Color-coded task markers improved recognition
Cards revealed next steps instead of forcing users to hunt
Attachments + notes integrated cleanly into the flow
Logging expenses is a secondary task, but it directly impacts trust, reimbursement, and daily motivation.
In the previous flow, expenses were technically manageable but cognitively demanding. Statuses weren’t immediately clear, monetary information lacked hierarchy, and logging an expense required unnecessary navigation.
For users logging expenses on the move, this resulted in:
Unclear approval states, leading to confusion and follow-ups
Too many taps for a routine action
Poor scannability, especially when reviewing past expenses
Higher cognitive effort for a task meant to be quick and transactional
In Short:
The flow optimized for data entry, not for clarity.
The redesign focused on making financial information instantly understandable, reducing steps, improving hierarchy, and helping users log expenses without breaking their momentum.
Before
Cluttered visual hierarchy
Status tags not obvious
Too many taps to log expenses
Lists that looked visually identical
After
Clear grouping by approval state
Simplified 1–2-tap flow for adding expenses
Larger tap targets for mobile movement
Monetary hierarchy improved for quick scanning
Impact
Usability testing with real field staff showed a clear shift:
Task Success Rate across redesigned flows in testing
time spent navigating the app, down from 3:45
with fewer errors
during movement
navigating without assistance
For teams constantly on the move, this translated directly into operational efficiency and better adoption.
Reflection
Balancing familiarity with progress was the hardest constraint, and the most important one.
If I continued on this project, my next step would be:
Automated task sequencing based on distance and priority
Reducing unnecessary travel effort
Moving Staffcare from a task tracker toward a decision-support tool
FAQ