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Management Hub

Managers were spending 62% of their time coordinating rather than creating value, moving between 11 apps a day with 23 context switches an hour, and the cost was never the tools themselves but the translation layer between them. In 2023, as Lead Product Designer, I shadowed 10 team leads across 3 organisations and designed a hub where meetings, calendars, performance and operations share one context instead of exporting to each other.

RoleLead Product Designer

Year2023

Managers spent 62% of their time coordinating across 11 apps a day.

Shadowing 10 team leads across 3 organisations showed 23 context switches an hour. The manager had become the integration layer between tools that did not connect.

02How we thought about it

The cost lived between the tools, not inside them.

Calendar context did not carry into task boards, which did not connect to performance data, which did not feed scheduling. Each tool owned its own copy of the same people and work. The answer was shared objects, not better individual tools.

03What we changed

Made every surface reference shared objects

Meetings, calendar, performance and operations point at the same people and work. Context carries by construction rather than by export.

Made the calendar the spine

It is where a manager's decisions actually get made. Meetings inherit the people, the work and the history, so preparation stops being a manual gather.

Turned performance data into a by-product

Outcomes from meetings and operations feed analytics directly instead of via a quarterly re-entry exercise. Those signals then inform the next scheduling decision.

The trade-off

Anything touching a person's record is proposed and confirmed rather than applied automatically, because a wrong line in a performance note is about a person.

04What it did

Manager context-switching dropped 40% in pilot testing. Meeting preparation time reduced by 55% with connected calendar-task views.

How we knewEvidence

The cost lived between tools, and shadowing 10 team leads made it measurable.

Interviews

Qualitative

Team leads shadowed across three organisations.

Audit

Quantitative

11 · 23

Apps a day and context switches an hour, measured rather than estimated.

Usability test

Mixed

Flows tested with the managers whose weeks the product redesigns.

Analytics

Quantitative

−40%

Manager context switching in a pilot, with 55% less meeting preparation time.

DecisionsAnd why

What we saw, what we knew, what we chose, and what we gave up.

Share objects so context carries by construction

What we saw: Calendar context does not reach the task board, which does not reach performance data, so the manager becomes the integration layer.
Evidence: Audit· Quantitative62% of time spent coordinating; 11 apps, 23 switches an hour.
Interviews· QualitativeShadowing across 10 team leads found the cost between tools, not inside them.
So we: Meetings, calendars, performance and operations referencing the same entities.
Not: Integrations that export from one tool into the next.
What happened: Context switching fell 40% in a pilot, and meeting preparation 55%.

User testingWhat was and was not tested

Flows were validated with managers, and the pilot measured switching. The pilot is not a controlled study.

My role

Lead Product Designer

What I personally owned on this project.

01Led the product design across meetings, calendars, performance analytics and operations

02Ran the shadowing study across 10 team leads in 3 organisations and quantified the switching cost

03Designed the shared-context model that connects the four surfaces

04Designed the analytics layer so performance data is a by-product of work, not a separate task

Made with

FigmaContextual inquirySaaS product designAnalytics design

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