Create compliant schedules
Quickly plan schedules that align with contracted hours, labor laws, and scheduling rules.
UX Case Study · Workforce Management
Designing a smarter scheduling experience for healthcare workforce managers
Helping Schedule Managers move from repetitive manual planning toward automated schedule creation — while balancing customer needs, technical constraints, and an evolving design system.
Oracle Advanced SchedulingMake scheduling gaps easier to see — and easier to act on.
01 / Overview
From scheduling foundations to automation
Phase 1 established the implementation and administrative foundation for automated scheduling. In Phase 2, the focus shifted to designing Oracle’s Advanced Scheduling solution: an automated experience that helps Schedule Managers create schedules more efficiently.
To better understand customer needs and inform product direction, I initiated a partnership with our internal research team. The research uncovered a key insight that influenced how scheduling information should be organized and presented.
As the project evolved, technical limitations constrained what we could deliver in the initial release. Anticipating these challenges, I explored alternative design approaches to ensure we could still deliver a valuable V1 experience within the available constraints.
The outcome
I designed and delivered an automated scheduling experience that enables Schedule Managers to generate schedules and automatically assign shifts based on existing work patterns, shifts, and scheduling rules — reducing manual effort and providing a more efficient path to schedule creation.
This release represents V1 of a multi-year initiative, establishing a foundation for future enhancements to the advanced scheduling experience.
02 / The problem
Scheduling means balancing many variables at once
The project focused on the core scheduling workflow: generating a schedule from a blank slate, reviewing and editing assignments, and publishing the finalized schedule.
Schedule Managers must continuously evaluate staffing needs, worker availability, contracted hours, scheduling rules, and labor regulations. They need to ensure the right people are assigned to the right shifts while meeting operational and workforce requirements.
Creating compliant, well-balanced schedules is time-consuming and repetitive. Managers need to understand coverage at multiple levels: whether enough registered nurses are scheduled for a given day, and whether individual workers are under or over their contracted hours.
Identify staffing gaps
Spot understaffed job roles and shifts so coverage gaps can be resolved before publishing.
Balance workloads
Identify workers under or over their contracted hours to help minimize unnecessary overtime and fatigue.
03 / Research
Customers needed a bigger picture
I initiated a partnership with our internal research team to better understand how Schedule Managers identify staffing gaps and make decisions about reallocating workers.
One key question was how much of the schedule they needed to see at once. Would a daily or weekly view be enough, or did they need visibility across the full scheduling period and beyond?
Key insightFive weeks wasn't always enough.
While initial requirements emphasized organizing data by job role and day interval, research revealed that customers wanted visibility beyond the standard five-week scheduling period — ideally across the entire year. They needed context to recognize coverage patterns and evaluate opportunities to reallocate workers across days and shifts.
“Do I have enough day nurses on Monday? If not, could I ask a night nurse to come in earlier, or could I ask a Tuesday day nurse to come in on Monday instead?”
— Schedule Manager, LHR
Design implication: The experience needed to do more than display staffing gaps. It needed to give managers enough scheduling context to evaluate alternatives and make informed staffing decisions.
Research artifact goes hereAdd a research synthesis, affinity map, or annotated insight slide to show how you arrived at this finding.
04 / Design exploration
Making more scheduling information visible at once
My explorations focused on two questions: how much scheduling information should be visible at once, and how could I maximize the amount of useful information on screen?
Find the right time horizon
I explored daily, weekly, and two-week views, informed by competitor analysis and customer research. Participants expressed a strong preference for continuous scrolling across the full five-week scheduling period, making it easier to understand staffing patterns without repeatedly switching views.
Reduce empty space in the Gantt view
Using the Redwood Gantt page template, I explored its built-in parent-child grouping pattern to organize resources by job role. However, the indentation in the resource column created excessive empty space and reduced the amount of scheduling data visible on screen.
Prioritize open shifts
I explored organizing shifts chronologically while placing open shifts at the top. This brought staffing gaps to the forefront and helped managers focus on coverage needs before reviewing already-assigned shifts.
Group repetitive open shifts
I explored grouping multiple open shifts rather than displaying each as a separate row or node. I collaborated with the Redwood Gantt design team to develop a customized Gantt node component, reducing visual repetition and preserving more scheduling context on screen.
Show your design iterations hereBest visual: original Gantt layout → empty-space problem → prioritized open shifts → grouped open shifts. Add brief annotations explaining each decision.
05 / Challenges
Turning constraints into workable solutions
Establishing a research partnership
I hadn't seen other designers working on Workforce Management products actively partnering with our internal research team, so I took the initiative to establish that collaboration. We worked through how to partner, clarify responsibilities, and make research useful to the design process. The partnership also encouraged greater awareness of the research team's services across the team.
Adapting to technical limitations
Research indicated a preference for continuous scrolling across the five-week period, but technical limitations affected what we could support in V1. Because I had anticipated implementation constraints, I had explored an alternative approach. I could pivot while keeping the core customer need — easier visibility into staffing information — at the center of the design.
Working within an evolving design system
The Redwood Gantt component was evolving alongside my project, creating gaps between its capabilities and the scheduling experience's needs. As the enhancement backlog grew and priorities shifted, our VP directed the team to limit enhancements to high-priority requests.
Collaborating beyond the immediate release
I partnered with the Redwood Gantt product manager and developer on a practical visual customization rather than relying on major changes to the shared component. After delivering V1, I pursued Oracle's Redwood affiliated program to explore adding the customized components to the shared library for other designers to use.
What I took away: Constraints don't remove the need to advocate for users. They make it more important to identify the underlying need, explore alternatives early, and collaborate closely with product and engineering partners.
06 / Outcome
Delivering the foundation for automated scheduling
I designed and delivered V1 of the automated scheduling experience, enabling Schedule Managers to generate schedules and automatically assign shifts using existing work patterns, shifts, and scheduling rules.
The solution established a foundation for a more efficient scheduling workflow, helping managers move from manual schedule creation toward automation while keeping staffing requirements and scheduling constraints in view.
Automated shift scheduling
Generate schedules and assign shifts based on work patterns, staffing demand, and scheduling rules. Support 15-, 30-, or 60-minute intervals, with drag-and-drop adjustments.
Staffing and labor visibility
Review variances across FTE hours, budgeted hours, and staffing demand to help balance coverage requirements with workforce and budget constraints.
Scheduling compliance
Account for labor laws, union regulations, minimum and maximum hours, fatigue management, seniority, and other scheduling rules.
Click through prototype
Looking ahead
As V1 of a multi-year initiative, this release established a starting point for expanding Oracle's advanced scheduling capabilities. The work also created an opportunity to feed practical component improvements back into the broader Redwood design system.