Branch

Creating New features with constraints

The Challenge:

Our team was partnered with Branch, a workforce management app, to come up with new features for their mobile app. We were given a limited timeline for development, so we had to focus on the most relevant features, both to the users and the clients. This case study deals with sensitive information, and has been edited to protect the intellectual property of Branch. A full report can be viewed here, with the password provided upon request.

The Goals:

Learn more about other workforce management apps to gauge what is there and what is missing.
Learn from clients and users to understand their priorities when it comes to Branch.
Create a series of prototypes that address the needs of users, while remaining within a temporal constraint.

Before we could work on the future, we had to study the present. This involved several steps, including a competitive audit, stakeholder interview, and a customer journey map. These gave us a solid foundation of knowledge, and let us know what Branch had to offer, and what they could offer.

With all that data in hand, I began sketching out features, brainstorming what they could look and do. I created quite a few options, but needed to focus on the ones that could be realized in a limited amount of time.

With those constraints, we brought in developers for tech scoping, giving each feature a score using the Fibonacci scale. The features were then voted on by the team, and the top 11 were shown to users using a Kano survey.

The results of the Kano survey had a few surprises, but great data as well. I learned that the team’s priorities were not the same as the user’s priorities, and that the features presented had mixed levels of excitement. Analyzing this data gave me a clear area to focus on, and I went forward with a series of annotated wireframes to present to the clients, showcasing a set of features that would have the biggest impact in a short amount of development time.

NEXT STEPS

The next process would be to focus on what would come next after the initial round of features, focusing on more long term goals and milestones.

Reflections and takeaways

The lesson I learned with this project was the importance of development time and tech scoping. Not every feature can be made due to the time needed to implement each one. Even though each feature was designed with the same amount of time, creating them can vary greatly, and using that information to move forward was of great importance to project as a whole. For future reference, I will consider the tech constraints, as well as the user.