Designing Vizmo App for Employees

A UX case study

To begin with let me tell you a little bit about Visitor Management, for those of you who are hearing it for the first time. All of you must have visited an enterprise office at least once or multiple times for most people I assume. What do you see when you enter their reception or lobby? This following what most of you must have experienced.

1. A raggedy notebook at the front desk, for you to fill in your details before you check in. Oh boy, that looks messy ain’t it?
2. A receptionist or a security guard takes in your information and fills it out on their computer. Alright, this one is not that messy but sounds like a time-consuming process.
3. Well, a lucky few of you might have come across something a bit more digitized, an iPad at the front of the desk, where you can go fill your details in without anyone else’s help.
4. An even luckier lot might have now come across a QR code-based check-in system. You scan and everything. else can be done on your phone. *phew* Just saved yourself from touching a public surface during a pandemic!!

So no 3 and 4 are what Vizmo handles for you. Vizmo makes sure your visitor gets the best and the safest experience while visiting an enterprise office whilst also giving the enterprise client an easy to use platform to manage all the data.

About Vizmo Pass

Vizmo Pass is a pocket app for the Vizmo Visitor Management web application. Vizmo lets you keep a track of all your visitors for the day and also view past and upcoming visitors. Vizmo also allows you to review your visitor’s health, restrict entry based on health response or other reasons, approve or reject visitors, send invites to pre-approve visitors as well.

The purpose of the Vizmo Pass app is for an employee to perform all the above functions hassle-free from anywhere using their phone.
The mobile application now allows the employees to not only invite visitors, but also check themselves in advance for work so that all employees can fill a health declaration form prior to their visit, whilst making sure of the availability of workspace during a limited capacity work system.

Aim:

To help employees get back to work safely during the pandemic, by helping keep track of their visitor information like health, pre-approving visitors based on health criterion whilst also providing the organization with a system for them to preapproved their employee’s based on their health

Research

To kick start the research I decided to do a user study first, to understand the mindset of employees getting back to work after the pandemic in order. To understand their concerns regarding work and physical interactions with visitors.

The study was done in two steps, face to face interview and an online survey

1. Qualitative Research:

We conducted five face to face interviews with employees working in MNC’s regarding their return to work to understand their work-life, challenges, pandemic real fear, and many more. The information gathered was further documented the conclusion drawn has been shown below. Some of the questions with which the target audience was inquired are listed below.

User Inter View Questions

• Tell us a little bit about yourself?
• What kind of work do you do?
• Can you tell us a little bit about the nature of your work?
• Does your work involve networking with people on a daily basis?
• When was the last time you visited the office?
• Do you prefer working from home over working at the office?
• When does your office resume work from the office?
• Does your workplace have a capacity limit due to COVID-19?
• How does your organization plan out the building occupancy?
• Do you inform your managers prior to coming to work? If yes, what mode do you use for this communication?
• Does your organization ask you to fill out a health declaration form? If yes, what mode do they use to execute the same?
• What are your primary concerns regarding your return to work?
• Are you expecting to interact with a lot of people once you are back at work?
• How many work-related apps do you have on your phone?

User Persona

2. Quantitative Research

For step 2 of the research, we conducted a survey of 35 participants working in organizations with more than 500 employees. The data gathered has been summarised below:

Target: Organisations with more than 500 employees
Stake Holders: Employees, Managers/Admin, CxO

Use Cases :

Based on the results from the research I was able to come up with the following use cases for the application.

1. Employee wants to go to work on a day of choice. But the workplace now has a 50% capacity limit. He/She needs to register for work in advance based on the availability of the space
2. In order to maintain the safety of the workplace, the employer requires all employees to fill in a health declaration form. The employee should be able to fill in a health declaration form through the app and send it for approval in order for him to go to work
3. Employee wants to see the status of his/her health approval
4. Employee wants to invite a visitor or a group of visitors to the office on a date of his choice. In doing so the employee can pre-approve their health, and prevent entry to those who pose a threat.
5. Employee wants to approve/reject visitors on site for any reason like health, suspicious entry, or unavailability of the host.
6. Employee wants to know his/her upcoming visitors for the day.
7. Employee wants to call/message/or email previous or upcoming visitors.
8. Employee wants to keep a log of all his/her visitors.

User Flow & Wire Frames

After understanding the use case, the next step in the process was to build the user flow. I divided the application into smaller modules based on the setup and functionality and then went on to make the framework. Laying down the framework was an important step of the design process. This helped me find and fix all the gaps in the user flow thereby enhancing the user experience. The modules have been highlighted below

1. App SetUp:

The user is sent an invite from the admin to join the Visitor management web application. Once the user sets up the account online, the user can download Vizmo Pass from the app store and login using the same credentials.

1. Profile: Employee can see profile information and check-in history and passes used under this
2. Spot Check-In: To check-in onsite at the kiosk
3. Pre Register: Employees can register in advance for work using this function. This way, they can make sure the capacity has not been reached before making a trip to the office. Also, employers can reject employees for health reasons and prevent them from entering the building altogether to be safe.
4. Accept/Reject: When a visitor checks in through the kiosk, a notification is sent to the host(employee). The host can view the details on the app and decide whether to accept the visitor or not based on his/her availability
5. Active Visitors: At any point in time, the employee can see how many active visitors are in the building who are there to see him/her.
6. Upcoming Visitors: At any point in time, the employee can see how many visitors he/she is expecting today along with their ETA
7. Visitor Log: The employee, can see a log of his/her past visitors and their details under the visitor log.
8. Invite: An employee can schedule a visit for an individual; or a group of individuals to the office, by pre-filling some details and sending them an invite. When an invite is sent, the visitor’s health is approved prior to his arrival
9. Directory: The directory consists of the contact details of all employees on the database and the contact details of visitors of the employee.
10. Settings: The employee, can configure notification and profile settings under here.

2. Employee Self Register — Flow

The employee registration feature lets the employee register for work in advance. Once the employee gets approved for work on the selected date, he/she receives a pass on the app with a QR code that he/she can scan at the reception to check in for work. The approval is based on various criteria like employee’s health and availability of workspace based on the capacity limit.

Employee Registration Flow

Wireframes — Employee Registration

An E-Pass widget on the home screen helps the employee know the status of their pass at all times.

E Pass Status

The various scenarios of the pass have been highlighted below

1. If the capacity limit has not been exceeded, the employee is in waiting until health has been approved. A health declaration is sent to the employee 24 hours prior to the visit. Once the health is approved by the concerned person the employee gets approved for work and a pass gets issued for check-in.
2. A QR is available to employees on the day of check-in for them to scan at the reception kiosk for check-in.

The various status of the above-mentioned process has been highlighted below.

E-Pass Widget Statuses

3. The invite Flow

The invite feature is another important feature of the Vizmo Pass app. The employee can invite individual or multiple visitors to their sit. The invite slow was broken into two steps mainly invite details and then adding participants. Well, nobody likes to fill long endless forms. A step-by-step process was proven to be more effective in our previous testings. The two steps are as follows :

Step 1: Filling out invite details

Step 2: adding Participants(Visitors/employees

The user flow has been highlighted below :

User Flow — Invitation

Wireframes — Invitation

UI Design

The visual design was made on par with the web application design. The colours have been chosen by following the guidelines of Vvizmo branding.

Learning

This project gave me a great understanding of the term “keeping up with the times”. Since our new feature ‘Employee Pass’ was need of the hour feature to help people get back in to work during a pandemic.

The changing times really helped me see the whole product in a new light of a work environment that has never been experienced by anyone before. It was a wonderful experience being part of an A to Z transformation of an existing product based on changing needs of the market.