Jake is a factory manager at a furniture factory. Every day, his factory gets parts from multiple suppliers in order to build products that are then shipped to customers. And Jake's factory is doing great - business is booming! But due to global supply chain issues, many parts have been coming in late leading to frustrated employees who don't have the parts they need to build the furniture, and late deliveries resulting in unhappy customers. Usually Jake doesn't find out about late shipments until it's already too late. 'But maybe,' Jake thinks, 'If my inventory management system was able to alert me about late shipments, I would be able to act before it's too late. I think it's time to upgrade.'

My goal is to design an inventory page and alerts system that can successfully help Jake ensure on-time delivery. In this case study, I'll discuss the steps I'd ideally like to take if this were a real-life project, while simultaneously presenting work from the steps necessary in order to successfully complete the brief.

I.

The most important step before starting any project is to sit with my team (Product Management, Dev, etc) in order to understand what our product goals and capabilities are for these new features/product. Why has the decision been made on our end to spend time these features? What value is this feature expected to bring not only to the user, but also to our company? What limitations are we working within, technologically or time-frame wising?

Obviously, due to the nature of this task, I do not have a team I can sit with in order to get answers to all my questions. But let's say I did. Next step, research!

I made a quick sketch outlining and reframing the key points from the brief, and listing some initial questions that jumped out to me. Next to the sketch, I typed up some of the questions so they can be viewed more clearly.

What solutions are there that already exist for this use case? Who are our competitors and what features do their softwares offer? What are they doing well and what can they do better? How will this product be different?
What else do we know/need to know about our main persona? What does his day look like? How often does he go into/want to go into this software? What is his level of technological understanding?
How urgent are the alerts we're talking about? How often do these alerts come up? What actions does the manager want to/need to take after being notified about an alert? What is important to include on the inventory screen?
Who else is using this software? Other factory managers? Other personas? How do these different personal interact within different parts of the software?

Ideally, I'd want to create and implement a full blown research plan to get answers to these questions. Really get to know our potential users and their needs through surveys and in-depth interviews, and use those findings to build personas, empathy maps and user journeys. Given the timeline of this project, I felt that the most important step for me to take at this point in order to build a successful solution was to conduct secondary research and build a competitor analysis about the inventory/factory software market.

The world of inventory is vast and complex and the software available to support this industry is equally as extensive. It could take weeks for someone to get up to speed on the industry as a whole. So, in order to remain within the scope of this project, I decided to focus my competitive analysis on three popular softwares I discovered during my research, DEAR Systems, Katana, and Flowtrac.

I created a side-by-side comparison to see the basic features, similarities, and differences between these softwares. While I wasn’t able to chat with customers to learn more about what inventory information is important for them to see, I was able to view static screenshots of competitor products to get an idea. I also read through customer reviews to get a more empathetic understanding of the users. From these reviews I learned that it is crucial for users that the software they use be customizable while being designed in a clean and clear way - in order for the users to easily navigate the complex software.

III.

The second task for this brief is to design an alert system for the software. I was not able to find any information online about alerts within inventory software, specifically. So, while I do have some previous knowledge of notification design, I did some additional online research on the best UX practices for alerts, in general. Here are some guiding principles I learned:

Levels of severity
There are usually many different types of alerts that can be shown in a product, and it's important to differentiate the level of severity and design different experiences accordingly.
Consider actionable alerts
Actionable alerts can save a user time by allowing them to complete a task without opening another screen or navigating to another part of the software.

Location is key
Alerts should appear at the top or bottom corners of the UI to avoid obscuring the interface. It's crucial to make sure the location of these alerts remains intact especially for responsive interfaces.
Concise copy
The copy text in alerts is critical to designing a successful alert. The text should be concise and easy to read, and the design of alerts should be sure to accommodate for copy of different lengths.

IV.

My next step would be to look at, or build, a detailed app map to understand where the inventory page sits within the IA of the software as a whole, and how we can best design the alerts within that framework. Using that information I would then create user flows to help be further design the best user experience. For the sake of time, I created very basic versions of those documents.
‍
Here are my sketches:‍

While sketching, more questions came up about how to best design these features. Of course, ideally it would be great to do more testing and get feedback from other relevant stakeholders before moving forward with the actual design. But, for the sake of this assignment, I made quick decisions of what I believed would work best and moved on to rough wireframes.

The two flows for this case study will start from the software dashboard. On the dashboard would be a card visualizing important inventory data. Jake can either click this card to take him to the inventory page, or go through the left-hand-side nav menu. At the top of the inventory page there will be a search bar, so that Jake can easily search for a specific piece of information he is looking for. Ideally, there would be an advanced search feature, allowing him to use filters to further help him refine his search. Next to the search bar he'll find action buttons, allowing him to easily import, export, or print the inventory list. I had learned about the importance of customization, so in this design, Jake can easily customize the type of information that is important for him to view in the inventory table. By clicking the 'Edit Table' button, Jake can drag and drop new columns to the table, that would then populate with the relevant information.

When it comes to the alerts, Jake can configure notification settings via the Settings page. Alerts will appear at the bottom right-hand side of the interface, with concise information about the alert. If the alert is not important to Jake at the moment, he can 'Dismiss' it. But, if Jake chooses to 'View', he will then see a pop-up modal containing quick actionable links to help increase his productivity and save time.

V.

There are many other important UX steps I could take at this point to ensure the features I designed would be as successful as possible (prototypes and usability tests to start!). But, with the time constraints and expected deliverables for this project, my next step is go jump straight into UI.

Since my recent experience is focused on designing for enterprise, I decided to take a bit more liberty with the UI, aiming to create a design that clean and inviting, while still remaining professional.

BELUGA SYSTEMS

I.

III.

IV.

V.