UX designer / Product designer
Counting stock at a warehouse
User flow for counting stock at the warehouse
Background
One of the more complex projects I led at Consafe Logistics. The task was to redesign the current product's interface while adhering to the system logic of existing functionality used at over 400 warehouses by thousands of users around the world.
Consafe Logistics is a software company that provides solutions for warehouse management operations, administration, and control. Warehouse operators, the target group of users, use the product called Astro WMS®, which is extremely powerful, however, complex, and requires a great deal of technical understanding. New users make mistakes rather easily, lose time figuring out the system, and often need assistance to be able to work. The UX team has been tasked to design a modern user interface for warehouse operations that builds on the Consafe Logisitcs’ strong technical platform and sharp product functionality to improve the current user experience.
Brief
Take the lead on creating the UI design for implementation and usability testing. Utilize research insights into a complete blueprint covering all aspects and scenarios of the task using components of an internal design system.
Solution
A UI flow leading warehouse operators through selected locations and instructing them to verify products and quantities by scanning or manual input.
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The design is concerned with quality rather than the speed of counting while minimizing distractions for the user. For that reason, I designed a built-in calculator to help users count on the screen rather than forcing them to pick up their phones to do the calculations. It will help them when multiplying bigger numbers without losing attention.
Job story
As a warehouse operator, I need to count stock to ensure the expected amount of products are stored in respective locations so that the warehouse inventory is up to date.
Target group
It is most often the more experienced warehouse operators that are entrusted with recording the correct quantity of products. The user counting stock is a typical "Stina". Our persona is a 22-year-old who wants to do a good job according to routines so that she can keep this a physical part-time job alongside her studies.
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I met quite many Stinas during my customer visits and tested the prototypes with them. The job requires a person who is focused and not easily distracted.
Process
A big part of the process was to continuously communicate requirements with the solution experts and product owners all the way to make sure we did not design out of the current scope. The focus was to make the solution seem to feel more intuitive and contextual, giving space on the screen only to elements helping the user to perform the job to be done. Equally important was to make all the related, less frequently used actions possible to trigger as needed. See an example of sketches that were used to brainstorm and review the concepts.
User testing
Together with another colleague, we visited a couple of customers and met with operators who usually count stock. As the design is the first iteration of the redesigned product, we obviously did not aim for any statistical accuracy, mostly to get a feeling of whether operators do understand the instructions and can independently perform the given task. We adapted the prototype details to the customer's context, using their product information and more to make the prototype look as close to reality as possible. The usability testing was performed both on site as well as remotely with 5 customers. Based on the feedback, we adjusted and simplified the screens when handling certain flows.
"I would like to use this already... Really great we can see the product pictures, that will make me sure I look at the right product"
"It's more human friendly, I can say...It's more specific, it seems like it knows what it's doing. That's nice."
Results & Learnings
I delivered the solution in the form of UI Charts, an internally developed method to deliver a design that both explains and documents the flow, covering main flows and error cases. See an example of flows delivered to the development team below. The solution was drafted and iterated upon multiple times. It was extremely complex to balance the users' perspective with the design patterns, the PO's vision, development costs, and the constraints of our current product the design is built upon. I managed to consolidate my knowledge of Material UI but also learned a thing or two about taking ownership of the design decisions and learning when to stop iterating. Below, you see images showing snippets of the final design.
My role
UX project lead, research, testing, UX/UI design
Methods
observation, user interviews, sketching, contextual inquiry, prototyping
Tools
Sketch, Illustrator, MIRO, Jira
Duration
14 weeks, 2022-2023