Thrifty Table —
Turning closing hours to Business Hours
Project
Implementing 5 planes of UX to solve a problem faced by fast food vendors in the US.
Sector
Digital Services
Role
Research & Design
Year
Spring 2023
Collaborator
Karthik Sharma, Diksha Rawat, Shikha Singh
Problem Space
Inventory Management is a part of the Maintenance wing at Tekion, where automobile parts need to be available all the time, so that the workers can instantly fix automobile breakdowns, such as car repairs, changing certain parts in vehicles, supplying spare parts etc
Challenge
The end-to-end cycle of issuing an order, getting a price estimate from the store, negotiating the estimate, and eventually receiving the order was the primary challenge.
fig. Existing Manual Process Flowchart
Pain points
The entire process used to be done manually by employees, calling the store, and maintaining orders on sheets resulting in unnecessary loss of time in placing an order and frequent order delivery inefficiencies.
This manual process resulted in a lot of unnecessary chaos, bill management issues and costed time of the management team, until we decided to fix it
Opportunity
Automating this cycle would not be necessary during the initial days of the organization when the automobile parts were required only a few times a month but with growth, the demand increases and thus, maintaining such systems required more than cold calling and order sheets.
Work done
We connected with the Inventory Management Team, brainstormed a possible automated workflow, and delivered Tekion Store, a feature integrated into the B2B product that eases product discovery, order placement and delivery tracking conveniently improving the inventory management work efficiency by 80%.
This tool was integrated and made available to all clients using the ERP platform to manage their inventory.
Work Process
Our work process involved rapid prototyping and testing with employees — Implementation and Inventory Management teams, via weekly meetings and syncs, to ensure that the feature we were building, would be solving the problem that they really faced.
We also wanted to minimize the learning curve for them, so we paid close attention to the technical jargons and process intricacies that they felt comfortable with.
fig. Work plan
User Interviews & Task Analysis
We initiated the need-finding research via user interviews to understand the users' current workflow, pain points, and goals related to inventory management.
After user interviews, we performed task analysis to break down the user’s key tasks (e.g., updating stock, bulk order, and generating bills) to identify the important roles and steps to be added in our solution.
Connect to see detailed Research Findings
-
Participants
Warehouse managers, Implementation Managers and Inventory Management Head.Sample Questions
Which tasks feel repetitive or inefficient?
What are your primary challenges when managing inventory?
What features would make inventory management easier for you?
-
Objective
Understand how users perform specific tasks to achieve their goals. By analyzing each step, we identify inefficiencies, pain points, and areas for improvement in the workflows.
Data CollectedSteps users take.
Tools they use.
Pain points, errors, and workarounds.
Design Foundations
The idea was to divide the page real estate into 80/20 ratio, 80% for the product list and 20%% for the cart, which needed to be open and on-screen all the time.
The interface was designed on the 8-pt grid in Figma. Each block of component including the space element, margings & padding was defined in multiples of 8 and stacked upon each other like components to create the final interface.
Out of all the different typographic and layout combinations of the card designs, the one that created a balance between “not too much” and “not too little” was selected.
Proposed Solution
Employees log in to their Tekion Portal, open Tekion Store, and select the items they need to buy.
Select where you want the items to be shipped shipped.
Place the order in just three steps
Keep yourself up to date by tracking your orders
Usability Testing with Stakeholders
To test the solution with users, we picked up the most common use case which was discussed during our interviews with them and performed the following steps:
Created a working prototype for the end-to-end flow as described in the Use Case
Conducted Guerilla Testing workshop with the same users as participants
Asked them to complete the entire flow without asking for help
Observed where they stopped and what made them stop.
Did similar excercise with multiple participants
Mapped the most common issues and prioritized them
Redesigned the experience eliminating issues
Results
After working closely with the engineering team, we launched the feature and observed the feedback in the next few weeks.
Our two primary indicators of success were, quicker usage and improved satisfaction. Fortunately, our users found the experience more effective and better than the traditional method. Additionally, it resulted in an increased process efficiency by 80% (survey data) and an enhanced user satisfaction index.
Post completion, I went ahead and dived into several other unidentified problems in the ERP platform at Tekion and completed a total of 8 successful similar projects including a CRM revamp and design system enhancements.
.
fin