The Problem

‍Technicians relied on multiple tools to manage cable locate jobs, but existing workflows made it difficult to prioritize urgent tickets, navigate job details, and take action efficiently.

At the same time, the team needed to determine whether a table-based worklist—previously explored in the Worklist Usability Test—would better support this group of technicians and their workflows.

The goal was to better understand technician behavior and identify opportunities to improve visibility, prioritization, and workflow efficiency across the system.

My Contributions

  • Conducted a moderated usability study with 11 field technicians
  • Designed tasks across worklist, bulk actions, and job detail flows
  • Ran A/B testing on Job Details layout (merged vs separate views)
  • Synthesized behavioral patterns and usability gaps
  • Delivered recommendations to improve workflow efficiency and visibility

Progression

Understanding Technician Behavior
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We studied how technicians manage cable locate jobs across different workflows, including worklist navigation, bulk actions, and job detail interactions. Participants varied in experience and job volume, completing tasks using unfinished mockups to simulate real workflows. The goal was to understand how technicians:

  • prioritize urgent jobs
  • scan and interpret worklists
  • navigate between job details
  • take action efficiently
What We Learned
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Several consistent patterns emerged across testing:

Urgent jobs were easy to miss
Technicians relied on clear visual indicators to identify “hot” tickets and strongly preferred red highlights for urgency.

Table view supported scanning better
Most users preferred table layouts for quickly interpreting large sets of job data.

Technicians wanted to act directly from the worklist
Changing status, assigning jobs, and managing workflows without leaving the list was seen as critical.

Information hierarchy mattered more than layout alone
Fields like address, cross street, and ticket status were essential for decision-making.

Merged job details reduced friction
Users preferred seeing all relevant information in one place rather than navigating between tabs.

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Designing for Workflow Efficiency
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The research led to a set of focused recommendations to improve usability and workflow clarity:

  • Introduce clear visual indicators for emergency and high-priority tickets
  • Prioritize critical information such as address, cross street, and status
  • Enable key actions directly from the worklist
  • Surface newest and most urgent tickets more prominently
  • Merge job details and contact information into a single view

These changes aligned the interface with how technicians actually work—supporting faster decisions and reducing friction across tasks.

Conclusion

This research expanded on earlier findings from the Worklist Usability Test, reinforcing that table-based layouts better support technicians when scanning and managing large sets of jobs.

By examining behavior across the full workflow, we identified opportunities to improve visibility, prioritization, and access to key actions.

While introducing a table-based UI required additional technical investment, the improved scanning, clarity, and workflow efficiency made that investment worthwhile for this group of technicians.

Full Presentation upon Request

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