Designing an Attendance Platform That Cut HR Queries by 90%
How I replaced manual attendance tracking with a scalable 0-to-1 platform in 3 weeks
Role
Product Designer
Company
elRed
Status
Live
Built a 0->1 platform replacing manual attendance tracking for 40+ employees, saving HR 10+ hours weekly.
The Problem
As elRed scaled to 40+ employees, attendance tracking became chaotic. HR juggled Slack messages, spreadsheets, and manual payroll processing—fielding 40+ daily queries and taking 2-3 days to approve leave requests. The team needed a centralized system that could scale.
Before- Spreadsheet used for tracking leaves and attendance
Key Design Decisions
Separating Actions from Reference
Early wireframes combined check-in with attendance history. User feedback showed this was confusing—employees couldn't find the check-in button quickly.
Solution: Created two navigation sections—Check-in/Checkout (for daily actions) and Attendance (for history). This reduced cognitive load and improved task speed.
List View Over Calendar View
Initially explored a calendar for leave tracking. Employees found it overwhelming—they just wanted quick answers: "How many leaves left?" and "Request status?"
Pivot: Simple list view with leave balance upfront, chronological requests, and clear status badges. Information findable in seconds vs. scanning a full calendar.
Before/After of separated navigation
Calendar vs List comparison
Role-Based Experiences
Employees needed speed. Admins needed control for payroll processing. I designed separate interfaces optimized for each.
Employee and Admin dashboard
The Solution
Employee Experience
One-tap check-in, visible leave balances, simple leave requests.
Check-in/out -> leave balance -> leave request experience
Admin Experience
Centralized approvals, real-time workforce visibility, payroll-ready data.
Admin dashboard and leave approval queue experience
Handling Edge Cases
Auto-checkout: Employees forgot to check out. Proposed automatic 11:59 PM checkout to engineering—maintaining data integrity without admin work.
Also handled: half-day leaves, retroactive entries, date-range filters.
Impact
90%
Reduction in HR queries 40+ daily → 4
Same day
10+
Streamlined
100%
Single
What I Learned
Simplicity beats polish - List view wasn't as pretty as calendar, but solved the actual need faster.
Separate actions from reference - Frequent tasks deserve dedicated, clutter-free spaces.
Speed + quality are possible - Shipped in 3 weeks through focused collaboration and proven UI patterns.