Shifts Web App

Shifts is a web application designed and built to allow small and large teams to keep track of their teams shifts, assign team leads, add notes and instructions for their teams to follow. Shifts was designed to be simple and modern which makes it easy to use and easy to sign in to.

A small local nonprofit tested the prototype with their event security team over four days, scheduling about 15 members across 3 teams and creating 20 to 30 shifts. They liked how shift creation let them add a title, assign members, and use labels to filter and check coverage, with the properties panel giving a quick overview of each shift. Coverage became visible without a spreadsheet, which supported the core bet. The main gap was communication: they wanted to invite members and send shift notifications with instructions, which the prototype couldn't do yet. I logged bugs in Linear, shipped a notes field in the properties panel, and focused on design refinements and component fixes, while backlogging team invites and notifications for a future version.

Nonprofit-style shift work falls between two mismatched product categories: employee schedulers (When I Work, Deputy, Homebase, Connecteam, Sling, Shiftboard) built for paid hourly teams with per-user pricing, and volunteer tools (SignUpGenius, Better Impact, VolunteerHub, Volgistics, Bloomerang, WhenToHelp) strong on signups and CRM but weak on daily ops, with a true staff-and-volunteer hybrid calendar rare across both. Coordinators are largely stuck running schedules through spreadsheets and group texts, with no single view of who's working when, leading to double bookings, stale rosters, and understaffed days that go unnoticed. We framed the core failure as managers can't see staff coverage without a spreadsheet, which narrowed the September 18 prototype to one calendar plus a staff roster (cutting swaps, reminders, payroll, and mobile claim flows), and drew its UI direction from Linear and Notion rather than legacy scheduling software, aiming for a calendar that feels like a work OS. Building v0.01 validated that interaction shell (shift cards, side panel, labels, priority, notes) but showed shifts on days rather than people against coverage, with no staff rows, headcount, gap cues, or role field yet, pointing to the next research bet: making people, assignment, and coverage gaps first-class on the same surface.