As I worked in a ecommercial company, tracking numerous orders to make sure all the customers had received their products is necessary every day. However, it is a burden for small businesses to purchase a system that tracks orders automatically, and manual operation could be inefficient and fallible.
Before dived into the design phase, I interviewed a few storekeepers who sell their product either online or physical.
These storekeepers consider it is important to know the shipment status in real time, and want a system that could simplify the process of order tracking.
The app should be able to help users monitor their orders easily, save time cost and generate statistics.
Yoshida is a local thrift store owner who needs to organize a lot of orders and solve delivery issues if there are any.
Yoshida organizes all his package data with excel or google Sheets on his computer. He needs to track the shipment status by typing order numbers on carrier websites and solve problems if a shipment status shows an error.
To quickly generate ideas, first, I use hand drawing to make several versions of each page. Secondly, I would pick out the parts that satisfy the user's need the most for each page. (Parts with star marks in the picture.)
Combining all the marked areas, we can get a refined version of each page.
I use Figma to turn my paper wireframes into digital ones. Turning paper wireframes into digital ones isn't only a necessary step to create a low-fidelity prototype but a chance to examine if the selected parts are reasonable.
In the usability tasks, I realized that mark functions should be easier to find, and the chart doesn’t work as well as expected.
Based on the finding of the usability study, there are some improvements of the refined mockup. For example, I removed the chart which didn’t work well in the usability study. On the contrary, I added a tab that filters all orders with issues. In addition, before the usability study, the mark function hid on the order detail page; in the current version, users could mark an order directly on the home page.
Beside improvements based on the usability study, I also made other improvements on the UI visual. For example, the page title shrinks so there is more negative space.
I also try to apply Gestalt Principles and design system.
Using technology to simplify the process is necessary for a business. The app could save small enterprise owners time on repetitive work and make more profit.
The interview and usability studies are very crucial in the design. Sometimes we might be resistant to changes, but we have to keep in mind that putting users up front is the main idea of UX.
