Problem
For warehouse workers, time is money - it is the single most important attribute to monitor when designing new features or updating current ones. For some e-commerce customers, their main flow for packing is what the industry calls SIOB (single item order batch). This happens when there are a lot of sales for single orders - one item per order. For this project, we are trying to solve time and speed - with special consideration to the painfully hypnotic trance of packing one item per order over and over again. The workers who pack these types of orders often do not look at the screen and often are unaware when they make a mistake or something doesn’t scan properly until they have packed several orders.
Discovery
Personas! Personas! Personas! Know who you are designing for!
An image depicting the warehouse worker persona type. Often seasonal, lower education workers carrying the mantra that “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Obstacles
Too pricey to add speakers to the terminals where the packing takes place (no audible ux for this one folks)
WiFi is limited to the terminals
No on-site testing
No feedback from workers
A screenshot of step 1 for scanning in single item batches. Simple design. Steps appear to be clickable but are not. The whole layout seems squished to the top of the screen.
A screenshot for step 2 in the process. Steps appear to be clickable, but they are not. Blue block is added to show user what they scanned in already with ability to “un-dismiss.” Activity log is on the right side of the screen to show the user what actions have been taken.
Additional Considerations
New feature: add in a way to tell the user there are suggested packaging for the item they are scanning.
Define and clarify 6 different states (dismissed, satisfied, pending, out of stock, partially satisfied, not recognized).
Clean up flow to auto-advance where applicable.
How are we going to show the user that an error has occurred when they are rarely watching the screen?
What happens when the user needs to exit the flow?
New feature: show the user how far they are in their process (i.e. percentage completed).
Some orders require an attachment - how are we going to alert the user to complete the requirements
The Solution
The prototype above shows the approved solution as a happy path flow where user is required to acknowledge several required suggested packaging types.
What did we change?
We added a card layout to clean up the view the user sees
We made the error user feedback toast messages stay until user dismisses them.
We cleaned up the stepper to no longer appear clickable.
We added in a percent complete
We cleaned up the activity log
We made the language more concise and clear
Where do we go from here?
Due to the nature of this application, we were unable to do user testing. This feature is now in production and we will continue to iterate as we learn more about how our users are interacting with the new flow. So far, we have received incredible feedback - reducing time spent packing single orders and making it clean and easy for new workers to understand.
Reach out for all your time-saving trouble-shooting tricks!