Redesigning for the employees using it
In 2022, I was doing freelance branding work for Dynamic CXS when I learned about their product, Beacons, which was already deployed and used by employees in Canadian Tire stores across Canada. I noticed that no one had talked to users about their experience. Beacons was built for functionality, not for people.
I decided to take this on myself. I conducted interviews, built research artifacts, and designed solutions based on what employees actually needed. The work was strong enough that the team shipped it. It became the foundation for Meerby, their rebrand.
Timeline
January to April, 2022
Team
3.4%
Increase in Sales Lift
14%
NPS increase
2 million
requests managed every week
Context
Beacons helps retailers get customers the help they need, faster. When a customer presses a help button, the right staff member is dispatched to the right place. The team had plans to scale to new retailers. Scaling without addressing design debt meant inheriting those problems at every new store. This was an opportune time to fix them.
Research
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”
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. I mapped the range of employees, environments, and tasks to understand the varying needs required.
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
I hypothesized that the lack of visibility into what their coworkers were handling was the cause of this hesitation, but I needed to validate that before committing to a direction.
First Iteration
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.
Testing 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. Employees stopped leaving requests for someone else
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
Competitive Analysis
Analyzing other apps
Research
Why not leaderboards?
Leaderboards were commonly used to showcase skill in other apps. Research into gamification revealed that leaderboards can improve short-term performance, 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. I took this into account when designing a solution.
Outcome
I designed a badge and milestone system that tracked each employee's progress over time. When employees hit milestones, they earn badges to provide a sense of levelling up individually, without competing against coworkers.
Design Challenge #3
Requests were tracked as they came in, but there was no way to view patterns across time or act on them during a live shift.
Reports
Previous Design
Exploration
Research before building
Research
Live shifts vs. historical reports
Outcome
I merged the two into a single page. The Popularity by Time chart shows request volume hour by hour so a manager can see that 3 PM to 5 PM is consistently the busiest window and staff accordingly. The Popularity by Department chart shows where requests are concentrated. For further analysis after a shift, managers can export the full report.
Impact
My redesign became the foundation on which Dynamic CXS built and rebranded as Meerby. 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.
What I learned
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.