Irene Muñoz
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Factorial · Product design

Smart decision-making

Turning a time-off request into a one-glance approval.

Product
Time-off & absence
Role
Product designer, end-to-end UX
Team
Design, Product, Backend
Platform
Web
Outcome
−70% approval time
Time-off request modal showing an approval recommendation with its reasoning

The redesign

Managers had to leave the request to check calendars, coverage and history before saying yes. I redesigned the modal to surface that context and make a recommendation, turning an investigation into a single, confident glance.

−70%

Approval time

+3

NPS points, manager satisfaction

The problem

Managers lacked a clear view of team availability.

Everything a manager needed to make a good call lived somewhere else, if it was surfaced at all. So they either did the legwork themselves, which was slow and easy to get wrong, or approved without full context.

  • Is anyone else on the team already out that week?
  • Does this overlap with a critical coverage period?
  • Has this person’s schedule already changed recently?

Without the right context, every approval took longer.

Constraints

What the recommendation could show.

  • A

    Not just more data

    Cramming in every data point a manager might want would recreate the problem in a denser form.

  • B

    Signals must be trustworthy

    A wrong “looks fine” is worse than no signal at all.

  • C

    One interface, both cases

    The easy approval and the real conflict had to live in the same modal.

Process

I redesigned the modal around the manager’s decision.

The starting point was reframing the modal. I identified exactly which signals change a manager’s decision (team schedule alignment, colleague overlap and available days) and designed the modal to lead with those, instead of the raw request details.

Then the core decision: two explicit states for the same modal. The interface makes the judgment call about whether this is routine or needs a closer look, and shows its reasoning either way.

State AApproval recommended: no conflicts, approve in seconds.

State BReview recommended: flags exactly what to check before deciding.

The solution

The updated approval modal.

The redesigned modal opens with a clear absence summary, then a recommendation panel that either explains why approval is safe or flags the specific issue. Absence details and approval history are still there, but progressively disclosed instead of competing with the decision.

BeforeRaw fields and history. The manager does the synthesis.

AfterA recommendation that shows its reasoning.

Impact

A faster call, and a more confident one.

  • −70%

    Approval time. Managers no longer leave the modal, or the tool, to check team calendars or ask colleagues.

  • +3

    NPS points. The change didn’t just save time, it changed how confident managers felt making the call.

Reflection

We had to decide which requests the system could assess confidently. When it could not, the interface recommended a review instead of forcing an approval or rejection.