Wowflow | Facility Management Platform
Home Screen & Task Prioritization
Role: Product Designer | Platforms: Mobile & Desktop
Wowflow is a facility management platform used by field workers and property managers across the DACH region. Field workers use the mobile app on-site to manage and complete maintenance tasks. Property managers track progress and report to clients from desktop.
The product had visual polish, but the underlying flows had usability and logic problems that weren't being identified or solved. That's what I was hired to do.
Field workers said they hadn't seen urgent tasks. Whether that was genuinely true or a convenient excuse didn't matter for the design problem. Either way, the screen wasn't doing its job. I participated in customer service calls directly; the pattern was consistent across multiple clients, not isolated complaints but a structural failure showing up repeatedly.
The app opened to a task list with no clear sorting, labels with no obvious meaning, and overdue tasks only visible behind a filter. There was no intentional logic behind any of it. These were exactly the problems I was hired to solve.
Before
After
The Design Principle
The app needs to answer three questions the moment a field worker opens it: what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and where. Every decision in the home screen design follows from those three questions. Anything that doesn't answer one of them has no place on the screen.
The Summary Cards
The top of the home screen shows a horizontally scrollable row of cards: Overdue, Due Today, Open Requests, Due Next 7 Days, Due Next 30 Days. Each card shows a count. Clicking a card filters the task list below to show only those tasks.
The critical decision: cards with no content don't show as zero; they disappear entirely. If there are no overdue tasks, that card doesn't exist on the screen. The worker sees only what is relevant right now. Nothing competes for attention that doesn't need it.
When the 7 or 30 day card is selected, a mini calendar appears showing the specific dates in that range. Each date is clickable; tapping a date autoscrolls the list to tasks due on that day. This directly solved one of the fundamental failures of the old design: date labels like "This Week" with no calendar context and no way to navigate by date.
Action Buttons on Task Cards
Rather than requiring workers to open each task to take action, primary action buttons appear directly on each task card. For field workers in fast-paced physical environments, reducing taps to the minimum wasn't a polish decision; it was a functional requirement that emerged from usability testing, where I observed older participants needing to put on reading glasses, witnessed workers struggling with thick thumbs on small touch targets, and heard a participant mention gloves directly.
Three button types appear depending on what each task requires:
Reply: for tasks assigned to the worker that require acknowledgment. The worker can accept or decline. Declining requires a written note explaining why.
This creates a formal record that the worker saw the assignment and responded. An accountability function, not just a reply.
Start: for tasks where working time needs to be recorded. Three previous approaches had all failed: QR codes, which workers forgot to scan when entering and leaving workspaces; GPS tracking, which workers rejected on privacy grounds; a concern I shared, finding it inappropriate to track workers' physical location continuously; and a Start button inside the task detail view that workers who knew their recurring tasks well never opened because they didn't need to see the details. Moving Start to the home screen card removed the dependency on opening the task entirely. After starting, the button changes state: if photo documentation is required, it becomes Add Photo; if not, it becomes Done.
Add Photo: for tasks where proof of completion is needed but time recording is not. Some companies and clients require photo documentation for reports or invoicing verification. Workers who knew exactly what to do didn't need to open the task details; they needed to complete it and document it. One tap from the home screen adds the photo and marks the task done.
The Location Problem Solved Without GPS
The CEO wanted tasks sorted by location, grouping everything in the same workspace so workers could complete all nearby tasks before moving on. The logic was travel efficiency.
I disagreed. Location-based sorting would have buried urgent work under geographically convenient work. A task three days overdue would sit below a task due next week simply because it was in the same building. And without GPS, which workers had already rejected, the system had no reliable way to know where a worker actually was at any given moment.
I pushed back. The home screen sorts by urgency first. Overdue tasks are always at the top, regardless of location.
Location-first
Tasks grouped by workspace regardless of urgency.
Urgency-first
Overdue always first.
Simple, clean, no client assets needed.
But the CEO's underlying concern about travel efficiency was legitimate. I resolved it differently: when a worker completes a task in a workspace, the system knows exactly where they are at that moment; no GPS needed, just the action they just took.
A hint appears inline in that workspace section: "2 tasks are due this week in this workspace"
Two options: show tasks or dismiss for later.
If the worker chooses to see the tasks, the cards expand in place, showing the relevant action buttons: Start or Add Photo for each nearby task. If they choose later, the suggestion is dismissed. The screen adapts: the active summary card disappears with a transition, and the next relevant card takes its place.
The worker makes the decision. The system makes the information available at exactly the right moment, when location is already known, without ever overriding urgency or tracking movement.
Usability Testing
I built a prototype and ran usability testing sessions with a mix of existing Wowflow users and non-users. Testing confirmed the prioritization logic worked and was legible to someone encountering it for the first time, not just to people already familiar with the product. Existing users described the app as uncomplicated, clear, and helpful. Non-users got into it quickly.
Testing also revealed physical constraints I hadn't fully designed for: older participants needing reading glasses, workers struggling with thick thumbs, and gloves mentioned as a daily reality. These constraints shaped the information density decisions throughout: maximum context per glance, action buttons surfaced at the card level to minimize taps, and large touch targets.
Outcome
The CEO described the home screen as one of the most important milestones in Wowflow's history, naming me directly in a public post, calling it something genuinely created, not just delivered.
Workers could immediately identify their most urgent tasks on first app open. The visibility failure driving the "I didn't see it" complaints was directly addressed. Facility managers gained accountability data they could show their own clients.
The company has since reached profitability and grown to over 100 customers, including McDonald's, OBI, and Vienna Business School.
Tools
Figma, customer service call observation, usability testing with existing and non-users, and the Wowflow component library with custom extensions.