Project Overview
Project Title: POET & Encore - Inventory Management
Organization: GAP
Project Date: June 2017 - February 2018
Role: Product Design & Research
Project Summary: Gap contracted me to improve their inventory management software and increase adoption rates—data needed to be aggregated between multiple platforms.
The Challenge
Problem Statement: Inconsistent inventory data, originating from multiple sources and lacking a central source of truth, was causing shipping delays and misplaced orders. Employees abandoned software usage and began tracking and troubleshooting issues offline, causing additional inconsistencies. This resulted in frustrated employee experiences, increased customer support calls, and dissatisfied customers.
Business Goals:
• Establish a central product to manage inventory with confidence
• Deliver an MVP in 1.5 quarters before the holiday shopping season
• Increase employee usage and satisfaction
• Decrease customer support calls
Target Audience: Line Managers, Pickers and Customer Support
Constraints:
• No user insights
• No central or unified design system
• Multiple products that were not connected, storing and using the same data
• Resource limitations
• The holiday season was 1.5 quarters away, and code freeze imminent
The Solution
Process: Lean UX
Heuristic Evaluation: A thorough audit of the existing products revealed significant usability and data quality issues.
Ethnographic Research and Task Analysis: Traveled and spent time on location observing people, jobs to be done, and processes to understand why employees were not leveraging the software. Shadowing and a workshop were conducted with multiple shifts to understand usage needs and expectations better.
XP Pairing: Paired with the product owner, lead engineer, and developers to design, build, and release quickly
Established UI standards: Existing corporate brand standards were referenced and used as a foundation to develop a UI style guide and ensure new work was A11y compliant.
Prototyping: Axure and Sketch were used to create low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes for testing and feedback with customers and internal stakeholders.
Testing: Leveraged prototypes and QA environments to see if proposed solutions met needs
A lean, agile approach was used to deliver ahead of schedule
Initial Discovery Findings
• UI was not responsive and did not function on most devices employees used
• Verbiage did not mirror natural language/terms used by employees
• Design was not visible in lowlight working environments
• Data was siloed
• Employees needed a quick way to locate packages via an audit trail
• Employees needed to be notified when issues were identified
• Three primary users were identified: Line Manager, Picker, and Customer Support
Audit of existing products and workflows
A user survey was leveraged before the on-site research sessions to get a basic understanding of usage and focus areas
Original UI
Working environment
Current UI was not responsive and unable to be used on remote scanners
Prioritization
UX worked with senior stakeholders in Product, Engineering, and Marketing to rank levels of effort and identify critical features that must be addressed first. Based on those working sessions, a preliminary roadmap was created.
We identified long-term initiatives and short-term opportunities that scrum teams could take action on immediately.
Whiteboard session with stakeholders to prioritize users and jobs to be done
Framing
Based on the new insights, we put pencil to paper to reimagine what an improved flow should look like. The most significant finding revealed during sketching sessions was how ShootProof was constructed. The product is built around galleries, making adding new features to the platform challenging.
Revised workflow based on discovery
Rapid Prototyping, Testing, and Refinement
Using Axure, I worked with the lead UX strategist and designer to convert their wireframes into a clickable prototype for proof of concept and testing.
Alerts Prototype built with Principle used for testing
Initial dashboard concept based on discovery
Results & Outcomes
• New products were released into production ahead of the holiday rush, and the original delivery plan
• Adoption rates increased 100%
• CTO recognized the positive results the team delivered
• Customer/tech support involvement decreased by 90%
• Data quality issues were resolved
• A central product replaced multiple legacy applications
New UI based on Discovery and Framing work
Revised dashboard for ASRS based on iterative testing sessions with users