Summary
About ESS
Employees use the Employee Self-Service (ESS) system daily to access and manage their own HR-related information and tasks. These include recording working hours, managing leave, entering overtime, submitting medical claims, and requesting company loans.
The aim of ESS is to enable employees to handle HR-related tasks efficiently and with ease, reducing time, cost, and effort. For managers and HR personnel, ESS provides visibility and control over employee time management and workforce productivity.
The vision I focused on was to make the employee experience simple and usable for both employee and manager users to
Accomplish their tasks efficiently
Making the system engaging and
Improving productivity that supports their daily routines.
ESS is used by approximately 14K employees in Indonesia.
Role
I acted as a Principal UI/UX Designer, while also handling the design interface, flow, and interaction for the holistic ESS experience.
The Idea
Research & Discovery
To ensure the platform truly meets user needs, I began by defining key user personas—identifying who they are, what they do, what they expect, and what would help them complete their tasks with ease. I conducted user interviews with both employees and HR teams to gather insights into their expectations, pain points, and day-to-day interactions with the ESS. This was further supported by competitive analysis and user surveys to get a full picture of user behavior.
I looked for patterns across these data points to identify critical needs and behavioral trends. These insights became the foundation for informed, user-centered design decisions.
The research aimed to uncover
The background and characteristics of different types of employees
Roles and responsibilities unique to each employee group
Daily activities, behaviors, and workflows
Specific task-related needs for each employee type
How task success is measured
Pain points and barriers in completing their tasks
What we've found
The ESS persona has a more diverse and wide-ranging demographic, encompassing various roles and levels. It plays a pivotal role for both regular employees and managers/supervisors within an organization. This is because ESS users are employees from different backgrounds, differing in job position, job level, job type, behavior, mental models, proficiency, and expectations. This poses a challenge, as I must find a common thread to address the core needs of ESS users.
The research made it evident how different users would use the app differently. To cater to this, I categorized them into three user profiles based on their goals and tasks.
Operator
Blue-collar employee.
Goals
View and manage shift schedules.
Record, track overtime with accurate data and transparent payment.
View payslips instantly.
Pain Points
Limited access to technology, such as smartphones with outdated operating systems, insufficient memory, no email account, and inability to operate complex interfaces.
Tight work schedules and frequent overtime result in often forgetting to record attendance data.
Inaccurate payment calculations.
Complex systems and flow can cause confusion and frustration (low technology literacy).
Staff
Employee without subordinate(s).
Goals
Autonomy over their own administrative tasks, reducing the need for constant intervention from HR personnel, such as viewing payslips, attendance, leave balance, applying for leave, overtime, reimbursement, or shift changes instantly.
Ensure accuracy of attendance, overtime, absence, and leave data before the payroll period.
Get notified about company announcements, new policies, or schedule changes.
Pain Points
Slow approval response from manager.
Need to ask HR for payslips, which need some bureaucracy.
Manual paperwork and form filling to claim a reimbursement.
Overtime, attendance and leave data are not recorded properly.
Supervisor
Employee with subordinate(s).
Goals
Oversee and streamline various aspects of workforce management, such as manage and review subordinates time management, access real-time data on employee attendance, review the subordinate request, and access subordinates employment data.
Access to reports and analytics on their team's performance.
Pain Points:
Manage several subordinates can be complicated
Organizational changes that affect tasks and approvals.
Potential manipulation of attendance records by subordinates.
Build a System
Save, secure, and easy technology for employees
To build a successful system, enabling technology was crucial. ESS leverages Progressive Web Application (PWA) technology to deliver a mobile web experience that feels just like a native app. By using PWA technology, users don't need to update the application regularly, and it can be accessed across various platforms and devices, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones. I focused on ensuring users enjoy the same seamless and intuitive experience as they would with a native mobile application.
Starting with a system
ESS has its own design system, distinct from the CATAPA administration dashboard. This distinction exists due to differences in user personas, goals, and overall experiences between the two systems. Despite these differences, I ensure that both platforms share a cohesive design thread, so users who access both experience a consistent and unified interaction across the CATAPA product.
Key Needs
Defining Key Needs and Priorities
Based on the results of user interviews, stakeholder interviews, and competitor analysis, I identified four main priorities that needed to be addressed in the first development of the ESS system.
Ideation
I started by developing the information architecture, and concepts for primary use cases. This involved brainstorming with the Product Manager and UX team, sketching alternative ideas, and discussing technical feasibility with developers. After several iterations with the Product Manager, developers, and stakeholders, we finalized the latest prototype and proceeded with usability testing.
What matter the most
While ESS has many features, employees may not regularly use many of them. Thus, I curated the features that are most frequently accessed by users and placed them in the quick action menu.
The most frequently used feature for daily needs is recording work clock-in and clock-out times. Therefore, this feature is prioritized and placed on the dashboard so that it will be visible when a user first opens ESS.
The Solutions
Streamlined Experience
ESS makes it easy to connect and synchronize with employees, managers, HR, and the company, using a simple-to-use interface. Efficiently request, monitor, and manage employe data, and view employee recap to get insights for faster decision making.
I create the workflow, mockup, and prototype. One of the main flow for employee leave request in ESS as depict on this diagram below.
The workflow for employee leave requests in ESS.
Structured Navigation and Categorization
On the Home page, various shortcuts are available to access the most frequently used ESS menus, such as time tracking, leave, overtime, viewing employee recaps, changing shifts, viewing approval request notifications, and checking leave and reimbursement balances — all grouped by category. The placement of these features on the Home page is designed to help users carry out their daily tasks more quickly and easily.
Announcements are considered one of the key features within an organization, so the menu is placed in the footer for easier access. Other features, such as notifications and account settings, are also located in the footer menu.
Quick access to daily time tracking tasks
Employees record their check-in and check-out times daily, and they can pause their working hours during breaks. I placed the Time Tracking feature on the Home page because it is the most frequently used feature by users.
Users are given the flexibility to choose whether to Clock In or Clock Out first to prevent errors in case they forget to Clock In, and to accommodate varying work schedules.
Monitor employees in a centralized place
The manager can:
View subordinate employment data.
Monitor subordinates' attendance, leave, absence, and tardiness data.
Review and approve requests for overtime, leave, and absence requests.
Evaluations
Insight from User Feedback
After launching ESS to the public, we conducted an analysis of its usage to uncover insights into what was actually happening. We looked for patterns in the complaints, and the majority of feedback centered around the Time Tracking feature — such as being unable to check in due to photo access issues, GPS problems, and cases of employee fraud. Based on these findings, we planned several feature enhancements for the product backlog. These insights helped me define the future ESS strategy and develop more sophisticated solutions.