I stepped beyond my branding role to advocate for a more user-centred approach to the product. I led the research and redesign of Meerby's employee coordination tool, creating the foundation for future features and continued growth.
3.4%
Increase in Sales Lift
14%
NPS increase
2 million
requests managed every week
Timeline
January to April, 2022
Team
Context
In 2022, the team had plans to scale to new retailers. Scaling without talking to employees about their experience with the product meant inheriting those problems at every new store. This was an opportune time to fix them.
Research
I wanted to understand whether the product refelected how employees actually worked before we started scaling. I interviewed 17 employees, including floor staff and retail managers, at a Canadian Tire store where Beacons was already deployed, asking them to walk me through their daily workflows.
“My effort should be visibile in the app.”
Canadian Tire, Floor Employee
“I need to be confident I'm doing the right thing, especially in front of a customer.”
Canadian Tire, Floor Employee
“I need to make decisions in the moment, not after the fact.”
Canadian Tire, Retail Manager
Findings
These conversations revealed mismatches between how the product was designed and how employees worked. They showed that one experience couldn't serve every employee. Rather than designing for an average employee, I decided to design around the three distinct workflows.
Age: 14 – 21
Experience: Low
Starting their first job at a retail store. Good at picking up new technology. Things like apps come naturally to them. Still finding their place among more experienced coworkers. They are eager to prove themselves.
Pain Points
Age: 40 – 60
Experience: High
Has worked at the retail store for over 10 years. They have a deep store knowledge. Technology is not their comfort zone and they have anxiety about using it while working.
Pain Points
Age: 21 – 60
Experience: High
Responsible for the whole floor's performance as well as their own. Managing multiple tasks at once. Has access to data, but they don't know what to do with it.
Pain Points
Core Problems
Trust
Responses were often hesitant, delayed, or duplicated.
Visibility
Individual efforts disappeared into store metrics.
Clarity
Requests were shown across multiple views.
Impact
Effort
Employees can't tell if a request is already being handled
Design Challenge #1
When a request came in, employees had to decide whether to respond or let someone else handle it. The interface gave them nothing to make that decision. Customers were left waiting.
Hypothesis
Previous Design
Validation
Testing two directions
Feedback
Option 1: Adding in progress cards
Option 2: Making an in progress tab
Synthesis
Employees responded well to the new design. They liked elements of both options, so I combined the strongest elements from both. I kept the coworker visibility on the requests tab from Option 1, and the request grouping from Option 2.
Iterating on the design also surfaced that high-priority requests were getting buried in the list, so I reordered the tabs to bring the most urgent ones to the top. After a few iterations, I had a solution that showed coworker availability directly on each request card.
Outcome
Average weekly unresolved requests showed a notable decrease from 9 to 5 in the first 2 weeks, which is a 44% reduction. The visibility gave employees confidence to make faster decisions.
When a coworker is already occupied
Design Challenge #2
Dashboard metrics only showed how the team performed. Nothing showed what any individual had done. For employees trying to gauge their own progress, there was nothing to look at.
Dashboard
Previous Design
Research
Analyzing other solutions
Research
An exploration not chosen
Rather than comparing employees against one another, I decided to reward personal progress because research showed it creates longer lasting motivation. Leaderboards can work for a short period, but fail in the long term because they leave people feeling inadequate. Individual progress tracking works because it is about competing with yourself, not others.
Outcome
Employees could finally see the impact of their work, motivating them through personal progress instead of competition. When employees hit milestones, they earn badges to provide a sense of levelling up individually, without competing against coworkers.
Design Challenge #3
During a shift, managers were making staffing calls as needed. Afterwards, they would use an Excel spreadsheet to analyze the data across days and weeks and adjust their staffing accordingly.
Reports table
Previous Design
All requests were logged in a table, showing managers when a request came in, when it was claimed, when someone arrived, and when it was finished. There was no way of seeing patterns during a live shift.
Single Insights View
Managers could find insights in two places: The Dashboard tab and the Reports tab. The dashboard showed daily statistics, while the reports showed historical statistics. Merging the two would create a single view for the request data.
Iteration process
Refining the charts
Managers needed visibility into how their sales floor was responding to requests during a shift. Live charts provided that visiblity. I prioritized clarity over complexity. For example, charts showing requests by day of the week were replaced with charts showing requests by time of day.
Initial Iteration
Popularity by day of week
Day of week only confirmed what managers already knew, Saturdays are busy.
Refined Solution
Popularity by time of day
Time of day revealed the staffing gaps that actually mattered, like the 5pm rush.
Outcome
The Popularity by Time chart shows hourly request volume, so managers can spot the busiest hours and staff accordingly, rather than waiting days to find this in a spreadsheet.
The Popularity by Department chart shows where requests are concentrated, so staffing can account for which departments drive the load. The Excel export is no longer the only path to insight.
Impact
My redesign became the foundation on which Meerby was built. The employee-centred interface created the infrastructure for their dispatch system to scale across hundreds of stores.
It shipped because the work was grounded in what employees actually needed. These were real solutions based on what employees told me, and not just features their competitors had.
Reflections
Working in a high-stakes context, where employees are making decisions under pressure, made it clear that the experience needed to come first. It was shaped by the environment, mental load, and trust. I prioritized the experience and then focused on getting the interface right.
It also reinforced that designing with real users improved the decision quality. It was encouraging to get positive feedback from people who actually used the product.
Designing for both the employee and the business made me a better systems thinker. There were retail systems that I needed to learn and understand to make proper decisions when designing.