Enterprise | B2B

A tighter table, a better overview, and 23% faster planning

Workforce planning and resource management for retail operations

Challenge

A B2B workspace for tracking workload, planning staffing, and managing resources

I owned the resource planning dashboard — redesigning a legacy, table-heavy interface that made it difficult to quickly understand staffing capacity, budget impact, and resource allocation

I worked directly with the Product Owner and analysts, owning design decisions across the dashboard and initiative details experience

Role — Product Designer

I designed the core resource management experience: employee navigation, advanced filtering and search, moving people between initiatives, adjusting FTE, adding and removing employees, and monitoring resources within each initiative

Process

Direct access to end users was limited, so I built an alternative validation loop with the Product Owner and analysts

I prepared two versions of the interface:

First variant: employee table with initiative summary hidden — Initiative summary hidden behind a separate action

Second variant: initiative summary visible to the left of the employee table — Initiative summary always visible alongside the employee table

What validation revealed

Since I couldn't interview users directly, the Product Owner facilitated the sessions using the scenarios and variants I prepared. The comparison showed a clear preference for keeping the summary visible while managing resources:

Users could make changes and understand their impact without leaving the table context

Initiative details including budget, available resources, and internal FTE — Initiative context stays visible while allocating people

FTE and budget changes remain visible in the same workspace

Key decision

Based on the test, I brought the initiative summary — budget, available resources, and internal FTE — onto the same screen as the employee table instead of hiding it behind another interaction

This introduced a deliberate trade-off

The summary sits on the left, reducing horizontal table space instead of taking vertical space above it. Preserving vertical space meant keeping more employees visible at once, while the loss of horizontal space was mitigated by advanced filtering and search

More importantly, this created a closed feedback loop within a single screen

Users could change resource allocation and immediately see how it affected the initiative’s FTE and budget — without switching between views or losing context

Impact

Compared with the previous interface, testing with a control group showed:

23%: less time spent on scheduling and segment management
40%: fewer interface-related support requests
17%: higher user satisfaction

[Results reported by the product team]