Sprint at a Glance
Recruitment
Power users of Google Workspace who actively rely on Workday for mission-critical tasks, specifically defining the need to frequently request time off, approve financial slips, and manage clock-in/out procedures.
Method
1:1 Remote Moderated In-Depth Interviews (60 mins) conducted via Google Meet. Testing leveraged a high-fidelity Figma interactive prototype simulating the Google Chat environment to ensure realistic and contextualized evaluation of critical user workflows.
Overview
The Workday extension was highly validated as an indispensable tool for eliminating friction. Users reported significant appreciation for the ability to bypass inefficient context-switching and immediately access crucial information previously locked within Workday’s disorganized legacy interface.
Impact
The MVP successfully launched to the public, validating the core functionality. My research now serves as the foundational roadmap for bridging the gap between direct shortcuts, intuitive Natural Language Processing (NLP) commands, and the successful integration of future, advanced Workday feature capabilities.
Workday in Chat
Role: UX Research Consultant
Timeframe: Three Week Sprint
Users are constantly seeking ways to streamline their workflows and eliminate context-switching. This led to a pivotal question for our team: What are the critical user needs and design considerations for integrating Workday functionalities—specifically time off, expenses, and coworker information lookup—into Google Chat™ in a way that truly empowers users to manage their Workday requests more intuitively and streamlines their daily workflows?
My comprehensive research journey outlined in this case study demonstrates how we addressed this challenge, leveraging deep user insights to embed powerful Workday capabilities directly into Google Chat, dramatically improving efficiency and user satisfaction.
What We Learned
The feedback highlighted a need to move Workday's core tasks (like Time Off requests and approvals) into a fast, intuitive chat interface to bypass daily logins and cumbersome navigation. This approach prioritizes button-based interactions over command lines, leverages conversational AI for quick queries, and crucially integrates time-off approvals directly with the user's calendar to automatically mark them as "Out of Office," saving time and improving planning.
Enhanced Speed and Workflow (Addressing Pain Points):
Participants felt the new integration would be faster to use than the existing Workday platform. The current pain points this integration helps solve are:
logging in (daily 2FA login for Workday was cited as a major pain point) and
findability (content within Workday is difficult to find due to multiple tabs required to complete one task).
Time Off Planning & Calendar Integration
Users strongly desired features to improve time-off management and planning. These included a
calendar view and visibility to
future balances (users want the ability to see time off balances for future dates to plan vacations and understand potential accruals).
Interface Preference: Buttons Over Commands
To boost usability, users strongly preferred guided interaction such as
buttons (typed commands are "cumbersome", and "difficult to remember") and
AI integration (for natural language queries, allowing advanced users the option to create custom commands via scripting).
Let's Connect
Whether you're exploring UX career paths, have questions about my work, or want to discuss a potential project, I'd love to hear from you!
480-294-9848
Gilbert, Arizona
© 2025 by MGUX