B2B Client Pro-bono Project
Countalytics is a company that creates image-based inventory management applications for different businesses. Their client Anima Iris came to Countalytics to build an application that would suit their needs. Anima Iris is a luxury brand that creates handmade handbags, wallets, and accessories. With their inventory increasing, they needed a solution for their inventory management process.
To design an application that would help Anima Iris keep track of items in their inventory within their different locations.
Our research had multiple goals that were sought out at different points of the design process.
Some of those goals were:
>To better understand the current inventory management and the purse creation process.
>To get a better understanding of what users' biggest pain points are in that current process.
>To better understand users’ experience navigating through the application, and their expectations
and preferences regarding the inventory management process.
>To identify potential usability issues related to navigation and layout.
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We conducted an interview with the CEO of Countalytics to understand the product and what businesses were using their inventory management software. In this meeting we confirmed the scope of the project, constraints, and what clients the team would be working with. They provided the names of competitors in addition to previous projects of their inventory management application.
The team met with brand owners to discuss the brand product and business goals.
Key Take-Aways:
> They have multiple warehouse locations including Dakar, Africa and Philadelphia, US.
> They needed inventory tracking for luxury products.
> They were looking to increase customer satisfaction.
The users of our inventory management application were managers, artisans, and other team members of the brand. We spoke with users in Dakar and Lagos. Although users had different roles, the team members had similar pain points when it came to their current inventory system.
Team members were having issues with keeping track of products between warehouses.
Team members had to communicate inventory stock levels through a third party messaging service.
Team members did not have access to inventory of raw material.
After receiving insight from stakeholders we conducted a C&C analysis. We looked into the features they provided and compared it to Countalytic’s inventory system.
After reviewing insights from our research we started the ideation process. As a team we recapitulated on some design ideas through sketching and user flows. We all had a different approach to the flow of the application. Sketches were provided by each team member and from there we created user flows to visualize the steps in the inventory management process.
We created three user flows to reevaluate steps taken when Anima Iris team members received an order, received returns, as well as adding new materials to their inventory. Here is one of the main product process flows:
We conducted a usability test with our grayscale prototype with the team of Anima Iris. We made sure to include the artisan, manager, and product manager to make sure the design aligned with their process.
Key Take-Aways:
Plus
> The dashboard contained all of the key items.
> The users were satisfied with the notes section and could easily add details to item.
> Adding new material to application was easy and intuitive.
> The application indicates where the bags are located and what product stage they are in.
Deltas
> Needed an input field for raw materials such as name, price, weight, and location.
> Application was not intuitive and team members had a hard time understanding what to do next.
> Wanted a user profile page.
> The tasks were very tedious for the artisan and there were too many options, they needed less clicks in adding raw materials.
We decided to iterate on our grayscale design ideas after receiving feedback from our users. We took insights from the plus/delta synthesis and iterated on the following:
We finalized our design changes and created a live prototype that our users can test and visually interpret how their work flow will be with this new application. Because this was a product of Countalytics we decided to keep the same style and color.
The Anima Iris team was provided the hi-fidelity prototype to test and navigate though the application. We found that they found the application straight forward, it was intuitive, and the flow was seamless. The users could easily add items to the application and found the app very organized and would be very helpful to their product purchase process. With that being said, they were very happy with the application.
There were features that the team would have liked to implement into the application but couldn’t due to time constraints. Previously we had spoken to the Anima Iris team members and have received feedback on having a messaging feature that would allow them to communicate from different warehouses. Our next steps would be to include this feature as well as include things like APIs (Application Programming Interface) to connect to e-commerce sites like Shopify.
During this project I got the opportunity to speak with users in Africa and experience what is was like to have a language barrier and a time zone difference. This project has taught me to adapt to changing situations quickly and to be able to think on my feet when it comes to design. I also learned how to speak with stakeholders and how to ask the right questions when it came to understanding the team at Anima Iris. With the design team, we were able to design an application that helped to improve the flow of their product process.