Order Management System (MVP)

Problem Space

The type of business Stretto was attempting to capture is high volume, low margin. This meant that automation was needed in order to maintain a profit margin. In addition, it was decided that the contract with the third party printing vendor would not be renewed regardless, so we had to build an internal system that would allow Stretto's print facility to take over those orders. This only left a few months to define an MVP, design the system, and documentation of requirements, and development.

Goals

1. Develop a system that will allow the company to capture the business before the contract with the third party renews.
2. Develop a forward thinking system that will allow for integration with systems from other business lines.
3. Develop a system that solves for the General Manager's and Print Production Team's paint points.

Constraints

• Only a month budgeted for research and design
• Re-routing orders from third party system to new internal system requires data field standardization.
• Must support user profiles and permissions.
• Must support order submission, order status for internal and external users, routing of orders to multiple facilities, and reporting.
• Must integrate with upstream systems (order submission & payment lookup) and downstream systems (billing & invoicing).
• Must allowing for future integrations with other business systems.

Process

Over the course of this project I conducted user interviews to understand the user's goals and pain points. I conducted a contextual inquiry to see how users carry out their work. I ran an affinity diagramming workshop with teammates to process the data and learn about the users together. I then synthesized user stories, user personas, and a user journey map from these insights. I ideated through rough sketches, wireframes, and a low fidelity prototype to get feedback from the stakeholder and developers. Finally I conducted a usability test on 5 end users to uncover any usability issues and to document and prioritize improvements to be made on the system.

1. Research

2. Synthesize

3. Ideate

4. Prototype

5. Validate

Research

I started out by creating a Research Protocol which communicated to the Business the business problem we're trying to solve, the methods I would be using, how long the process would take, and the expected deliverables. I then conducted user interviews with the Print Production Team. Next I conducted a contextual inquiry and observed their work process. I also analyzed their systems, tools and deliverables.

Research Goals

• Understand domain and user’s specific needs, as well as partners’ needs
• Synthesize user personas and journeys

Research Questions

• Who are the users?
• How do users manage their work process?
• What are the user’s goals and motivations?
• What are the user’s pain points?
• What are the external dependencies?

Synthesize

To process the transcripts from the user interviews I ran an affinity diagramming workshop with a team of Product Owners, Designers, and Developers. My motivation for the workshop was to get a cross functional team involved as early in the process as possible, so we all could learn about the users together. I also wanted to expose the team to the User Centered Design process since none of them had experienced it before.

For the workshop I printed out excerpts from the interviews on colored index cards. I had team members highlight the important information and take notes. We then grouped the cards and taped them up on the wall. Over the course of two days we continued to sort and group the cards and together we distilled themes and insights from the data. At the end of the process the team commented that they enjoyed the collaborative hands on approach.

The team was able to pull the following themes from the data:

• Roles
• Team Dynamics
• Communication
• High Level Process
• Detailed Process
• Quality Checks
• Tools
• Impediments

User Stories

To aid in communication with Developers and QA testers, I distilled high level user stories from the insights that came out the affinity diagramming workshop.

Personas

To communicate the users' goals and pain points I synthesized two personas from the data - General Manager, and Production Team Member.

Journey Map

I also created a journey map to highlight the workflow of the General Manager and Production Team Member. The journey map illustrates a timeline of their process, their challenges, and opportunities for efficiencies. The Stakeholder who was sponsoring the project preferred to use the term "challenges" as opposed to pain points.

Ideate

Due to the tight time-line it was decided that we would leverage CINgroup's existing system because they already had an infrastructure for user profiles and permissions, account lookup, and payment processing. This allowed me to focus on the user flows and interactions, and not have to worry about a brand new design system. First I drew rough sketches for the different screens, and then I created low fidelity wireframes. I was cognizant of incorporating existing modules and functionality that the developers could reuse for this system.

Prototype

From the data collected I was able to put together a complete picture of what the Production Team needed to carry out their work, and translate that into a low fidelity functional prototype. This prototype was useful for collecting feedback from the key stakeholder and the Development Team. I did not show the prototype to the Production Team because I wanted to keep them fresh for User Testing.

View Low-fi Interactive Prototype (Axure)

Validate

Before the release of the system to end users I conducted a usability test with five Production Team members. From this study I documented and prioritized bugs and usability issues to be fixed. The majority of the issues I found related to connectivity and system performance issues.

Results

• New order management system allowed the company to bring $2 million of annual revenue in-house.
• System was built for future integrations with other business lines to further capitalize on their investment.
• The main stakeholder was so impressed with the process he be came an advocate for me implementing it throughout other areas of the business.
• Team members were impressed with the process because they felt taken care of since I was taking their needs into account.

"Tristan is a very thorough and focused UI/UX designer. I worked with him on a project where he was responsible for documenting and wire framing our company’s document production user experience in preparation of a significant software build. As a stakeholder of the project I was impressed with how quickly Tristan ramped up. He asked thoughtful and insightful questions that showed a true understanding of the process and set us up for success. His on-time UI/UX design deliverable was exactly what the business needed and had tasked him with. Tristan is very professional and is a valued team member."

- Frederick Brown, Vice President of Operations at Stretto