How to ask users their working habits?

Question

I want to ask my users what their working habits are. Specifically, I want these pieces of information:

1. What locations they work from
2. How they split their time
3. Where are they working from now

This is my first idea:

I like seeing the days of the week, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to infer the days spent working at the second location.

This is a simpler idea:

I think it works, but personally find it a bit dull, and don't like the extra clicks and typing compared with the first solution.

In one or both solutions I'm concerned about these edge cases:

• People who work something other than 5 days
• People who split their time differently from week to week
• People who work at multiple (2+) locations

These questions will be part of a larger multi-part form. Any advice much appreciated.

Answer 1

Following the last three options:

• People who work something other than 5 days
• People who split their time differently from week to week
• People who work at multiple (2+) locations

I think the answer is not exact in days or hours, so I would not force the user to falsify data based on inaccuracies. In this case, as one of the values ​​directly affects the other, allowing the user to choose percentages of work in a period of time may be a better intuitive option.

In the example, two sliders associated with occupancy percentages:

Edit after the comment

With more than two locations ​​I would opt for another type of graph, a progress bar with values ​​definable by selectors:

This idea is taken from this question.

Answer 2

Regarding your concerns:

The first two points need to be addressed first, because they touch the data to be collected. It is fundamentally different if you want the granularity be based on one week or a whole month. If it should be months, a calender would be my first idea, but this is not necessarily the best one.

The third option is similar: Do you want to distinguish between "Home" and "Office" in your survey or do you want to collect which workplaces people use. This is dependent on the premise of the survey, not so much on the UX design.

The third point can be solved like: You need to adapt your control flow to primarily focus on locations and provide a "+" button to add another. Then ask for the hours of each. Maybe give "Home" and "Office" as defaults.

I agree that your first concept is more appealing. Pressing a few buttons all visible on a screen (allows "planning ahead") and be done in 2 seconds is great.

The second concept with the days input fields not so much. It is tedious. At least provide common use buttons ("2", "3", "4" etc) and a custom field if nothing fits.