Project at a glance
ServiceDesk Plus is powerful but painful. IT agents waste time scanning cluttered queues, switching between disconnected modules, and hunting for information that should be one click away.
A redesign focused on information hierarchy, streamlined ticket workflows, and a dashboard that surfaces what matters — without adding or removing features.
An estimated 45% average reduction in navigation steps across five core agent workflows, from task-flow analysis of the original vs. redesigned interface.
01 — The problem
ServiceDesk Plus serves IT teams of all sizes — ticketing, scheduling, and reporting. The functionality is there. The interface makes it hard to use.
Friction 01
No workload at a glance
Agents couldn’t scan what needed attention today.
Friction 02
Disconnected screens
Single tasks required jumping between multiple modules.
Friction 03
Everything weighted equally
Flat visual design made prioritising impossible.
Design question
How might we redesign ServiceDesk Plus so IT agents can triage, act on, and resolve tickets with fewer steps and less cognitive load — without disrupting the workflows they already know?
02 — UX audit
Before touching Figma, I used the live product and documented friction screen by screen.
Homepage
No visual hierarchy
Inconsistent iconography; every category looked equally important.
Ticket queue
Dense, unfiltered table
No priority signalling — agents had to mentally sort everything.
Calendar
Identical events
Deadlines and regular meetings were visually indistinguishable.
Dark mode
Poor contrast
Icons and cards blended into the background — harder to use, not easier.
Most critical finding
One common task — reviewing an urgent ticket, checking its status, and updating it — required navigating across three separate screens.
03 — Competitive analysis & personas
| Criteria | ServiceDesk Plus | Freshservice | Zendesk | UX opportunity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ticket priority | Long, unfiltered lists | Priority tags + SLA highlights | Smart sorting + tagging | Visual priority cues + SLA timers |
| Dashboard clarity | Dense, widget-heavy | Clean, modular summaries | Quick-access overview panels | Group key info, reduce clutter |
| Navigation | Fragmented, multi-screen | Streamlined, fewer clicks | Intuitive, cross-linked | Reduce context switching |
| Data visibility | Limited, hard to act on | Built-in analytics + trends | Strong manager dashboards | Surface actionable trends |
| Overall usability | Powerful but overwhelming | Modern, approachable | Optimised for speed | Balance depth with simplicity |
The pattern
Both competitors win by reducing the number of decisions agents make. I didn’t need to match them feature-for-feature — just borrow the principle: surface priority, reduce scanning, consolidate views.
Arjun
IT Support Agent · Tier 1 · 3 yrs on tool
“I have to open three different screens just to see what I’m supposed to be doing today.”
Goals
Frustrations
Redesign needed to: One consolidated view — tickets, tasks, approvals — with priority visual and immediate.
Meera
IT Operations Lead · 5 yrs in IT ops
“By the time I find the data I need, it’s too late to act on it.”
Goals
Frustrations
Redesign needed to: Dashboards that show trends, not counts — with SLA status and the team queue at a glance.
04 — Goals & iterations
Consolidate the agent view
Approvals, tasks, and priority tickets on one screen. Zero tab-switching to start work.
Make priority visual
Colour-coded tags, SLA indicators, sorted queues — no thinking required.
Improve without disrupting
Actionable insights for managers, familiar enough that agents need no retraining.
Clean welcome page with categorised entry points
Clear, but too shallow for power users like Arjun. A welcome page adds a step instead of removing one.
Summary cards for approvals, requests & problems
Agents could scan workload instantly — but cramming announcements and reminders in made it cluttered again.
Split view: summary cards + “Review Your Work”
Cards give the queue at a glance; the section below consolidates tasks, reminders, and announcements.
05 — Design decisions
Home page
IT Help Desk — My View
Ticket / requests page
Calendar & dark mode
06 — Impact
| Task | Before | After | Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| View today’s priority tickets | 4 | 1 | 75% |
| Find and approve a CAB request | 6 | 2 | 67% |
| Check SLA status on a ticket | 5 | 2 | 60% |
| Review team workload (manager) | 7 | 3 | 57% |
| Update and close a ticket | 4 | 3 | 25% |
Method, stated honestly
Without a formal usability test (a constraint of this self-initiated project), I measured impact through task-flow analysis — counting navigation steps for the five most common agent tasks in the original and redesigned interfaces. Average reduction: 45%.
07 — Reflection
The hardest constraint wasn’t visual — it was preservation. I couldn’t remove features. IT teams have deep muscle memory, and a redesign that moves things too aggressively creates retraining costs that kill adoption.
Key takeaway
How much can you improve a tool while keeping everything roughly in place? Quite a lot. Most of the gains came from visual hierarchy and consolidation — not from restructuring the information architecture.
Self-initiated concept project. No affiliation with ManageEngine or ServiceDesk Plus.
