It was the company’s biggest initiative of the year. Weengs was soon to be moving to a larger warehouse that would hold our new, state-of-the-art packing machine. The challenge was to ensure that our warehouse teams hit the ground running in this new and improved, but very different environment.
Through the amazing teamwork of our Product, Tech and Operations teams we managed to successfully redesign the warehouse flow from top to bottom. My role was to create three new and improved apps that our warehouse teams would use throughout their working day.
First I needed to explore more deeply who we were designing for. Warehouses can be intense environments, so truly getting to grips with it would require some contextually-focused methods. These were:
As the warehouse flow would be getting changed, this wasn't my main focus. I was more interested in the motivations and attitudes of the teams, and how aspects of the current flow were impacting these.
Here are some snaps from a full day spent with the teams and key stakeholders:
I created a user journey that depicts the original flow. It splits into 3 main workflows, each with a dedicated app that teams would use through touch-screen devices:
An empathy map helped visualise everything I’d seen and heard from the warehouse staff, and it formed the basis of a lot of design decisions to come!
Before making any decisions, we (Product) aligned with Operations and Tech to establish the scope and constraints of the project. The most important thing for the new flow was for it to take full advantage of the new - and very expensive! - packing machine’s capabilities.
For the apps, we worked together to generate a list of user stories which would align everyone on requirements.
The next step was to create the system logic which would form the basis for the apps. Working with the Tech team on this I could start to feel the excitement and energy as we mapped it out across the walls by our desks. Things were beginning to take shape!
Now I had what I needed to build the full, detailed user flow. It would be a key reference point for the main stakeholders on the project so we could all keep aligned.
It was time to start putting all of this theory into practice, so I worked closely with the Operations lead to design and run a full simulation of the new concept flow. The test conditions had to be as realistic as possible for us to measure how well it could meet the new KPI objectives.
So a lot of prep was needed! All kinds of props, materials, prototypes, staff as actors, and space to actually run it in the warehouse. Not to mention how disruptive this could be to the service our customers were currently paying for… It wasn't a test we’d want to run more times than we’d have to!
I created a series of basic 'happy path' mockups for the 3 apps that we'd use to simulate the digital side of the flow. The emphasis at this point was to have clear instructions rather than having anything that looked amazing. I made use of strong (almost garish) colours, image and large text, particularly as many of the users were not native English speakers.
After a first iteration to run user tests with the warehouse teams for high level feedback, I organised the screens and sequences to be used.
Now came the big day! We split the participants into 3 groups, one for each stage (Check-in, Prepping, Sorting) whilst 3 of us respectively took the role as observers and timekeepers for each. The test sequence was:
We repeated this twice more to account for anomalous data, with the added benefit of fresh perspectives in the user feedback each time as we rotated.
Thankfully the test went well; we validated the core of the new flow. Many of the findings were down to the limitations caused by the test itself.
It was amazing to see everything come together after so much preparation... a serious team effort!
Now it was time to start making the apps a reality. We put together a complete set of wireframes to user test with our warehouse teams, accounting for all use cases.
I ran moderated user tests with the warehouse team to pick up on any usability issues with the design. For each app I asked the participants to perform predetermined tasks:
Check in
Prepping
Sorting
Based on the (naturally more) granular feedback at this stage, we iterated once more to produce the final outcome. Three apps designed and validated to embed within the new flow. Our team’s other Product Designer - my partner in crime - supported, doing a particularly great job on the illustrations, icons and use of colour.
Sadly, in the middle of the build phase we had to slam the brakes on Weengs’ scaling initiative. Our Customer Discovery project that ran in parallel had revealed that our ideal customer segment was still inconclusive.
A huge shift in focus turned most of the company to a new research initiative to validate our product/market fit before we could go anywhere else!
Despite not being able to see the impact of our work, the experience I gained from this project was invaluable. It wasn’t just a product, but a complex system we were developing.
Even the testing phase had a lot of risk associated with it. This was a great lesson in how to safely approach a problem, and test a solution despite so many unknowns.
