A Shift Planner Built From a Problem at Our Own Kitchen Table

Most of our case studies begin with a client brief. This one began at our own kitchen table.

With shift work part of our family life, we knew how difficult it could be to answer a simple question: when are we all free?

A rotating pattern of days, nights and rest days rarely fits neatly into a normal week. Our rota was often a printed sheet or a photo on a phone, leaving us counting through dates whenever we wanted to plan a weekend away, arrange childcare or spend time together.

We built ShiftDeck to make that easier. What started as a solution for our own household has grown into an app for other shift workers, available on the App Store and Google Play.

The Challenge

The first challenge was making the rota useful. Having a photo of your shifts is one thing. Being able to check a date months ahead and confidently make plans is another.

The second was finding time together. Knowing when one person is working only tells you half the story. Families need to see when their time off overlaps, particularly when more than one person works shifts.

As we spoke to other shift workers, including paramedics, nurses, police staff and care workers, the same frustrations kept coming up:

• Rotating patterns were awkward to manage. People were entering shifts individually because their calendars did not easily accommodate the cycles they worked.
• Plans changed. Shift swaps, overtime and sickness needed to be recorded without disrupting the rest of the rota.
• Pay was difficult to keep track of. Different rates for nights, weekends, bank holidays and callouts made it harder to understand what a month should be worth.
• Work created more admin at home. Timesheets, CPD records and working hours were being managed across separate spreadsheets, notes and apps.
• Sharing needed boundaries. Families needed to see availability without seeing personal notes, earnings or wellbeing records.

The opportunity was to bring these everyday needs together in an app that was straightforward to use.

The Solution

We designed ShiftDeck around the way shift workers organise their lives, starting with our own experience and refining it through real use.

Set the pattern once

Users enter their shift pattern and ShiftDeck fills their calendar for years ahead. Whether the cycle runs over a few days or several weeks, it becomes easy to check future dates without counting through the rota manually.

Make changes without losing the pattern

Individual shifts can be changed to reflect swaps, overtime, sickness or different working hours. The underlying pattern stays intact, and starting a new rota preserves the record of shifts already worked.

Import an existing rota

Users can start with a photo, PDF or spreadsheet, reducing the time spent typing in shifts. They review the imported information before saving it, and the app asks for clarification where there is not enough information to establish a pattern.

Find time together

Calendar sharing lets partners and family members keep up with changing shifts. The Free time view shows where time off overlaps, making it easier to plan family days, appointments and holidays.

Shared views focus on the rota, keeping personal notes, pay details and wellbeing records separate.

Keep everyday records in one place

Alongside shift planning, ShiftDeck helps users track estimated earnings, overtime, on-call work and callouts. Timesheets can be created for a chosen period, while CPD records can be exported for a professional portfolio.

Users can also record who they worked with and how they felt after a shift, helping them reflect on patterns in their working life.

The app is free to use, with free backup. An optional paid tier adds sharing and further imports.

The Results

ShiftDeck has turned a recurring frustration into something we use in our own family life.

Checking whether someone is working on a particular day now takes a glance. Finding time together is easier, and the rota is useful well beyond the sheet it originally arrived on.

The app launched on both major app stores within weeks of the first build and has continued to develop through regular updates. Using real rotas, including our own, has helped us identify issues, improve imports and make the day-to-day experience more reliable.

It has also grown beyond its original purpose, becoming a product with paying users and features shaped by the needs of other shift workers.

Looking Ahead

We continue to develop ShiftDeck around the practical problems people encounter at work and at home.

For our clients, the project demonstrates the value of looking closely at a familiar frustration. A spreadsheet that takes hours to maintain, a process that depends on one person’s memory or a task repeated manually every week can all be starting points for useful software.

Running our own products keeps us close to every stage of that journey, from understanding the problem and deciding what matters to launching, supporting users and improving the product over time.

If there is a problem in your business that everyone has learned to work around, we would be happy to help you explore a better way.