gametime scheduling tool
DICK’S SPORTING GOODS/Golf GALAXY
OVERVIEW
GameTime is a Scheduling Tool that has two parts to it. One part is customer facing and lives on the Golf Galaxy website. This is where customers can go to schedule golf club fittings and lessons. The second part is for the employees to input their schedules and manage daily golf fittings and lesson appointments. Before this was built the Golf Galaxy chain was managing appointments using a paper notebook. There was a lot of opportunity here to start collecting really important data that could drive future business decisions. We quickly realized that a third party option wasn’t quite what we needed. My team started by conducting research on current needs and wants of the employees to build a custom system that met all of their scheduling needs. It has been launched to all 100+ Golf Galaxy locations and will soon be rolled out to the 800+ Dicks Sporting Goods stores.
The Opportunities and Challenges
There was so much opportunity with this project! We were literally starting from scratch. We wanted to make sure to build this with all of the data and analytics tied in from the start so we could really understand how the business was operating when it came to scheduling.
The biggest challenge for me was wrapping my head around a really complex scheduling system. Not only did we have to enter availability for employees but at the same time manage store resources, such as bay availability. I would often say “this makes my brain hurt” while designing these screens. We went through many rounds of usability testing …and had many fails along the way until it finally made sense to people.
WHAT INFORMATION DO THEY NEED, WHAT DO THE EMPLOYEES WANT TO SEE?
I interviewed many employees gathered/synthesized feedback to understand what information the employees and the business would like to see and how they would like to use that information.
LET’S EXPERIENCE IT FOR OURSELVES
To truly understand every step of the process we wanted to experience a golf fitting and lesson for ourselves. We dove in head first….with no golf experience at all. It was very helpful and we had some of our best ideas come from this experience.
USABILITY TESTING
This is a screenshot from UserTesting.com. I use this platform to conduct moderated and unmoderated usability testing on my prototypes. This can be anything from wireframes to higher fidelity designs. I will write prompts and ask the user to speak aloud ask they complete the tasks. This is a quick way for me for gain insights and validate my designs.
THE CUSTOMER SIDE
This is a sample of the scheduling site on GolfGalazy.com. Part of this process was designing a flow for the customers to schedule and also work with our External Comms team to set up reminder emails. We work with our internal Insights team to gather feedback on how this flow is working for them and how we can improve it. We monitor the interactions using Adobe Analytics. Analytics is an area that I have been trying to grow and learn more about. The image is blurred for privacy purposes.
THE EMPLOYEE SIDE
This is a sampling of screens from the employee side of the application. This was much more complex than the customer facing side. Above you will see (top left) where they would input their availability, (top right) a calendar view of their daily schedule, (bottom left) an option to print the schedule, (bottom right) and a way for employees to schedule an appointment when someone calls into the store.
REFLECTION
This project took a total of 8 months. We had one designer (me), one product manager and 5 engineers. I am really proud of what we built! By giving the employees this tool they it allows them to maximize the number of appointments they schedule and set up a schedule that works best for them and their store. This also increases revenue. Since it is my job to empathize and understand the customers, it was really awesome to give them the ability to book online instead of calling into the store.
We have quite a few features that we are still working on as we learn what our users need. So I think this will be evolving and improving a lot over the years. While designing GameTime I learned so much about how to work better with my engineers and stakeholders as this touches many other pieces of the business . I was able to pull in some other designers when I needed some quick feedback and design inspiration. So I will definitely be taking everything I have learned and applying it to all projects I work on in the future.