Kidding! Of course it didn’t.

But in this case, it definitely made us think harder. We had to rethink the same data-entry flow—this time for users on keyboards, not touchscreens.

As Nursa scaled to support more complex staffing workflows and relationship management, we saw a big shift: desktop use was climbing fast. Larger facilities had back-office staff handling scheduling and shift management instead of just on-the-floor nursing managers.

To support them, we created a new desktop calendaring workspace—an all-in-one hub to view schedules, payments, and lists for tracking histories and spotting issues. To keep users in their flow, all details and actions opened in a side panel, preserving context and a familiar layout.

The challenge?

Some healthcare schedulers are often under pressure, managing dozens (sometimes hundreds) of shifts at a time. The more up-market we moved, the more we encountered these workers.

Our original form shown here — fun as it was—was designed for touch, not typing. It didn’t guide keyboard users through efficiently, and tabbing felt random. So the PM (Ben, he rocks!) and I talked with several facilities to see how they worked. The feedback: “It’s fine… but a lot of clicking.”

• So we took it on as a challenge to reduce how much users felt like they had to click when using it on a desktop.
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• I set out to lead a design strategy that would:
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• -Keep flexibility & agility of the previous design
• - Enable “one-click scheduling” of a single job
• - Support fully mouse-less data entry
• - Offer a tool for rapid posting in high volume

First I had to define for myself and my design team which of these research insights we had to keep in mind so we could translate them into design strategy:

• Repetition: Users often post many shifts with similar details, and want to reuse patterns.
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• Linearity: Most users didn’t want or need to jump around the form; they followed a top-down mental model to how many of each type of shift needed to be created.
• High-volume, high-efficiency mindset: Time and accuracy were critical—misclicks and re-entry were costly.
• Context is everything: Users worked within specific views (like one location or one license type) and preferred to schedule in those silos to maintain focus.

With those insights in mind, I designed a posting flow and experience that feels like it already knows what the user wants to do—because, in many ways, it does.

Because they were posting often with the starting point of a day or even time slot, and because most we spoke to tended to focus their view, it was possible to create default patterns the tool learned as users worked based on what they viewed and what elements they frequently posted together.

The form follows a logical order: date → time → license, and it supports tab-based navigation and keyboard-only workflows (for data entry specialists this is most natural and comfortable).

Common shift types like “day” or “night” auto-fill standard time ranges, cutting down typing.

The tool learns common posting combos and suggests them back. (Not AI—just smart logic rules. But yes, AI speech-to-text batch posting is in the works, – the robots are coming for shift entry!)

• If a user frequently posts LPN night shifts at Facility A, those fields start to auto-fill together as a bundle including standard time and instructions templates as these things tend to stay consistent.

• Every time I saw my PM during the hi-fi design phase, he’d say, “you can do it one click, right? Single click? I told the CEO it could be one click!” That guy.
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• From the calendar view, users can select one or multiple time slots, quickly assign roles and times, and hit enter to post. Done.
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• For users who manage different views (e.g. by role or location), the tool respects the current view context—so it only asks for what’s not already known.
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• This setup dramatically reduces redundant inputs and supports error prevention by anchoring entries in a well-defined scope.
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