Project
Omnae
Role
Lead UX Designer
Time
June 2020 - Present
Medium
Web app (SaaS)
MY ROLE
What was I doing at Omnae?
I was hired to improve the overall experience of the product. This involved many different areas to focus on...
Identify pain points in the current product and the industry
Create and mainting a consistent visual style across the platform
Innovate and iterate on existing and new features
Test the product to validate assumptions and designs
MY ROLE
Features and actions that I worked on
LOOKING OUTWARD
Pain points in the industry
Intercompany data is disconnected
A variety of tools are used to store and communicate information. Without a singular place for data to be stored and accessed between companies, mistakes are likely to happen, and they are harder to diagnose.
Status of supply chains is not easily visible
Large and complicated supply chains are prone to delays and changes. Without an accurate model of how your supply chain is performing, it is hard to resolves errors or improve inefficiencies if you can’t easily see where they are.
Errors in quality are hard to identify
Decisions are sometimes made but not always tracked consistently, or they are tracked in multiple places. If an error arises, determining who is at fault can be difficult if there is not a clear and easily accessible history of what has been decided on between the two parties.
Repetitive processes are inefficient
In many companies, once an action is completed in a supply chain, someone needs to update it manually. This is an ineffective usage of people’s resources because repetitive tasks can be automated more effectively with software.
LOOKING INWARD
Issues with the existing product
Rigid workflows don’t accomodate all companies
Too many of the actions would only support a handful of user’s workflows. This led to inefficiencies and resistance for users when completing actions they were used to doing outside of the product.
Inconsistent visual styling and usability practices
A style guide and re-usable components were not being used, leading to an inconsistent experience across the platform. Many sections were lacking crucial usability practices which often led to confusion among users.
Lack of user feedback
The product had little-to-no user research conducted. This led to features being developed that may not meet the mental model of its prospective users.
OVERVIEW
Creating a minimum viable product
The product had a lot features, but it lacked a consistency among the workflows that existed.
With a focused approach, we could improve the experience of each of these actions and create a consistent experience for the core actions the market required.
Below is a flow chart breaking down these core actions and how they are connected.
PROBLEM
Issues with the old Purchase Order Dashboard
The intention of a dashboard should be to efficiently obtain high level information. Through user research, we learned people wanted to know:
01
"What comes next?"
People want to know what actions will be coming next, and the context surrounding those actions to make informed decisions.
02
The state of the order
With customers having hundreds of orders, the status of the orders needs to be easy to access quickly at a glance
03
Technical details and history
Customers also still want the ability to see detailed technical information and access the history of what has been done for legal and quality inspections
The old dashboard (shown below) lacked detailed context for the actions coming next and overall status. It also provided an unnecessary amount of detail for sections that were not needing to be accessed often.
SOLUTION
Improving the Purchase Order Dashboard
The new dashboard greatly improved on a few core areas (among others):
01
Linking to detailed areas
Detailed information that was not needed to be regularly accessed could be found through links to separate pages
02
Glanceable high-level information
High-level information for all necessary sections was quickly accessible, including the status and whether action was required
03
Improved readability
Similar items were grouped and the sections were consistently labeled for effective readability
PROBLEM
A lack of flexibility limits a company's ability to connect with real world scenarios
From research we know that many company's like to order their products in batches. In some cases, they also want to have them shipped to separate locations on different dates.
Here is an example of a new component that was added to support multiple unique shipments with flexible details.
Furthering the flexibility
We also learned that many company's wanted to modify their orders after they were already active. Based on this feedback, we added workflows for company's to go back and forth to request and approve changes to all order details.
PROBLEM
The platform lacked effective glanceability for the status of its items
A company can potentially have hundreds of items to keep track of, so it is important to be able to determine the status of any given item efficiently. I developed a visual system for quickly identifying the state of any given item (shown below).
In addition to the lack of visibility for an items status, there was also a lack of history and foresight into what actions/steps would come next in a given process. I developed flexible components that used this visual identification system to accommodate all the different types of items that exist on the platform.
SUMMARY
Wrapping up...
This was the largest project I have ever worked on. This made it difficult to decide what aspects of the project I would showcase.
I was the only designer at this company, which came as a big responsibility but also provided a lot of creative freedom which I really enjoyed.
I helped release several large features, create a component library and style guide from scratch, created an online tutorial database, updated the visual design of our marketing website and lead and conducted user testing sessions.
It was an incredible experience and I am very grateful to have been given an opportunity to lead the design and experience of a product.
KEEP EXPLORING
