PackemWMS
As Founding Designer for this early stage venture, the mission was clear: to craft the most forward-thinking warehouse and inventory management system in the fulfillment space.
Project
Logistics, SaaS, B2B, Startup
Contributions
Founding Designer, Business Analyst
Deliverables
Brand, UX Research, MVP Roadmap, Desktop & Mobile Design System, Visual Design
Team
Systems Architect, 4 Engineers, PM, Product Designer (me)
The Challenge
Identify gaps in current industry-leading warehouse management software.
Develop a deep understanding of best practices in fulfillment for the target market: small-to-medium size warehouse management operations.
Define features and roadmap for MVP release.
Establish design principles and practices.
Methods
Market research
Reviewed direct and indirect competitors of all sizes and across multiple platform: enterprise systems, ERPs, mobile apps, etc. in order to better understand common design practices and patterns uses to solve common problems in the inventory and order-management space.
Competitive analysis
Through demos and interviews with paying customers, I reviewed features and workflows in direct competitor software packages.
Contextual interviews
While on-site, at warehouses, shadowed pickers, packers, and every manager role to better understand workflows, opportunities for our product, and the persona I was going to design for.
Artifacts
Collected and photographed labels, pick tickets, customs paperwork, product stickers, and other documentation associated with supply chain. This documentation would become instrumental when creating data schemes and intuitive form-driven workflows.
Technical documentation reviews
Studying technical documentation and user guides for competitor software gave me and the engineering team insight on how marketplace leaders were solving basic problems, nomenclature, and other important tokens.
Prototypes and user testing
Rapid prototyping and frequent end-user interviews allowed me to pivot design decision often, enhancing the quality of the released feature.
Subject matter experts
A key to the success of the MPV was constant collaboration with our subject matter experts. Their insight into high-volume operations informed a lot of the business rules during requirements gathering.
Insight
Collecting artifacts and mapping them to specific steps in the different journey maps gave me insight as to what types of information is being consumes at every step along the receiving and outbound process.
Key Insight: There is information exchanged by vendors and managers that may never be seen by floor operators such as shipment POs or packing lists.
Insight
Studying documentation for competitor software gave the team technical as well as business context on the architecture, taxonomy, and rules commonly used industry software.
Key Insight: outside of our most used fields, there are optional fields found in competitor software that opened the door to exploring edge cases not previously thought of by me or the SME team.
Discovery
Over 6 months were spent across three states visiting at fulfillment centers and warehouses interviewing business owners, operations managers, logistics experts, and floor personnel.
Contextual interviews provided great insight of major pain points associated with current practices and systems.
Over 1,000 photos and 20 hours of video were taken to document environmental and human factors.
Market Analysis & Roadmap
Through dozens of live demos and interviews of direct competitors customers, I created a baseline set of features that would become the product’s roadmap and go-to-market feature set:
An administrative “set up” workflow
Receiving
Put away
Replenishment
Transfers
Picking (batch vs order)
Packing
4-10
Team size
17
Warehouses visited
20+
One-on-one Interviews
18
Major features released
Philosophy
One of the most important contributions as the design leader was to instill a design philosophy that kept the team honest throughout discovery, design, and architecture reviews:
As an admin, I should be able to be start and complete every inventory movement within the desktop application without the need for external data sources or mobile inputs.
Insight
Every workflow was workshopped alongside engineers with subject matter experts, compered to competitor software, and validated with architects within the design sprint to ensure that the approach complied with the project’s design philosophy.
Prototypes & Testing
Testing workflows with warehouse personnel became a weekly practice, allowing me to validate concepts and iterate quickly — a truly agile design and development workflow.
Brand
Designed to be different than the competition, PackemWMS stands out with a brighter and more energized color set than other market leaders. Its electric blue and unfamiliar typefaces speak to innovation and disruption.
I created brand artifacts that feel distinct and future-proof without sacrificing scalability across digital or print. Important consideration was given to mobile-first brand experiences such as app icons and light- and dark- themes.
Pattern: Confirmations
Important actions are always followed by confirmation messages that display the quantities being submitted. This second layer of forced validation was recommended by operations managers and operators themselves.
User Interface: Color Signals
Colors plays an important role in signaling success, completion, areas of focus, and/or accurate counts.
Insight
Warehouse and inventory movements happen fast across many SKUs and locations. The use of color allows operations to focus on specific areas of the screen to keep their attention on the step that matters for that second or two.
Inventory jobs are often performed by immigrant, entry-level personnel, making the on-boarding process a common pain point experienced by warehouse management. This insight became a massive consideration and benchmark for usability of the mobile app.
User Interface: Design System
The mobile application and component set was built from the group up, hence the importance of an early an easy-to-scale design system. Only essential components were created and cataloged for “system” worthiness. This kept us agile until the product was mature enough for a dedicated design system train.
Accessibility was key and the system relies heavily on thick borders, large typography, and solid color blocks.
Through extensive market and on-site research, I built a brand and product design program for this disruptive venture. By prioritizing user-centric design principles and staying aligned with the company's vision, we successfully created a solution that not only met but exceeded the expectations of our users, setting a new standard in the industry.
Remarks
This project is a great example where a human centered design practice led strategy and successfully paved the road for MVP release. Six months of uninterrupted on-site UX research was a remarkable aspect of this project and something that gave me the confidence and know-how on the subject matter to make recommendations that were fundamental to the architecture of the application.