Oracle · HCM Cloud
Employee Calendar.
- Problem Shift workers had no easy way to log exceptions to a published schedule, and a single change could ripple across more than one worker.
- Solution A redesigned calendar component, with list and day views built for mobile and full views on desktop, that gave shift workers a clear way to manage schedule exceptions.
Impact at a glance
- 100% task completion Users completed their core scheduling tasks end-to-end on the new mobile design, with no drop-offs.
- 75% CSAT Customer satisfaction validated the list and day views shipped in the first release.
- 10 users, 1:1 Interviews surfaced the pain points and job stories that shaped the work.
Challenge
Exceptions, not the schedule, were the hard part.
Shift workers had no clean way to log an exception to a published schedule. A single change could ripple across more than one worker, so the exception, not the calendar grid, was the real design problem.
Understanding the user
10 interviews, two main pain points.
I ran 10 one-on-one interviews with shift workers to surface job stories and pain points. Two issues stood out, shown below.
Analyzing the competition
Simple, visual, device-agnostic.
A competitive scan of calendar apps confirmed the pattern: the best ones were simple, visually clean, and worked the same way across devices.
Studying the current component
What Oracle's calendar already did, and didn't.
I audited Oracle's existing calendar component to scope what engineering would need to change. It was visually heavy, and only the day view was responsive.
Project scope
A responsive component, and a real workflow on top of it.
Two threads ran in parallel: build a responsive calendar component, and shape a workflow shift workers could actually use to get their tasks done.
Goals & metrics
What success looked like.
I set goals up front, shown below, to measure whether the final experience actually helped users get their tasks done.
Final calendar designs
List and day views on mobile, all views on desktop.
Time and technical constraints meant aligning more closely with the existing component. Feedback from internal users pointed to one clear preference: list view was how people wanted to scan events on mobile.
- Mobile: day and list views.
- Desktop: all available views.
Outcome
A mobile solution that worked for the majority.
The mobile-first release, list and day views, worked for the majority of shift workers.
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Task completion
100% completion rate.
Users were able to complete their core scheduling tasks end-to-end on the new mobile design without drop-offs.
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Customer satisfaction
75% CSAT.
Customer satisfaction score for the proposed designs, validating the list and day views shipped in the first release.
Reflections & design takeaways
Cross-functional alignment was the hardest part of this project. Senior executives, multiple PMs, and dev teams spread across time zones meant alignment had to be built deliberately, through regular syncs and documented decisions, not assumed.
Minimum valuable product, not minimum viable product. It's easy to chase the most polished solution instead of the right one. Feature-chasing without a clear user problem wastes effort and teaches you little. With limited time, isolating the core issue mattered more than covering every case.