My role: Ux/ UI Designer | Time line 4 months
The Problem
Neiman Marcus wanted to move to a more modern shipping solution. With only 43 locations, Neiman Marcus warehouses most of the items at an individual stores. Each store's inventory can vary, and sometimes the item will not have an SKU in the system, but it will have a reference picture. The reverse is common, too; an item will have a text description but no reference photo. The picker would have to know the inventory of the store and where things could be located. The pre-iPad way of shipping things is time consuming and prone to errors and shipping delays. The solution was to design an iPad app that would give the pickers more information and speed up the process of finding the merchandise in the store.
My Role
Sr. Ux designer / Visual Designer
Understanding the existing process
As I touched on above, Neiman Marcus did things in the shipping department a little differently. To help me understand this, I discussed with the Project Manager to understand how the shipping system worked.
The order was placed online by a customer.
Then the backend system would send that information to the closest store that had the item in its inventory.
Once the system had sent the order to the store, it was reviewed by a picker.
The picker would print out the orders for the day and set about trying to find them in the store.
The picker would return to the shipping department, place shipping labels on each box, then ship the items out.
The Business Value: A Reduction in downtime
The goal of moving the picking and shipping process to a tablet was to have the picker move freely around the store. Previously the picker would print their orders out a few times a day. Each time they needed to print orders, they would need to return to their desk to print the next round of items. This results in a lot of lost time just walking back and forth. In my mind moving to a tablet was a no-brainer. The proposed solution would allow the picker to move freely around the store to collect their items in a way that makes sense for their workflow. The picker could sort the items by shipping date, Designer, and department. The new system would increase the effect and the number of items that the picker could pick and get prepared for shipping.
The Solution
To follow the best practices of UX design, I wanted the application to be: useable, equitable, enjoyable, and useful.
Useable: Overall, I wanted the screen to be split into two main areas. All the items that needed to be picked that day would appear on the left-hand side. Adding a sort and filter button would allow the picker some flexibility in viewing the list of items that must be selected. Once an item was selected, a large image would appear to the right of the list showing the picker what the item looked like and all the relevant information, such as size, color, SKU number, ext.
Before the application, there was only a text description to go off of. The image and all the relevant information would help reduce the time hunting for an item based on just a text description. If the picker didn't know what an item looked like, it could be confusing to know where to start looking in the store.
Once the item was located, the user would scan the attached tag, remove it from the inventory, and attach it to the shipping order. The user could tap "Print" to print the shipping tag that would need to go out with the item. The tag would be attached to the item and ready to be boxed up and shipped out.
If the picker wasn't able to find the item, they could flag it as "Can't Find" this would tell the system that the item was not present in the store, triggering the system to search for another store.
Equitable: Using large images and simple icons was a way to communicate with the user, even if English was not their first language. Using color to denote urgency was also employed to aid in this. The application is intentionally devoid of color unless it symbolizes something.
Enjoyable: I wanted to design this app to be modern and crisp. Having a minimal amount of distractions and focusing on the task that the user needed to accomplish was vital to me. I wanted to ease the cognitive load on the user to allow them to focus on finding the item in the store. In addition, the design needed to feel upscale and on-brand.
Useful: This app solved a massive problem for Neiman Marcuse. It brought the shipping department into the modern area and streamlined the process. No more Picking an item and walking back to a desk to print the shipping label and packing slip. Now the picker could get multiple items and never have to leave the sales floor.
My Process
Wireframes: Once I understood what needed to be done, I started with Lo-Fi wireframes. I reviewed this with the project manager and creative director to get feedback. Once all of the internal feedback had been collected, we reviewed the wireframes with Neimen Marcuse to get their input. The client loved the wireframes, so we moved into the visual design with a few tweaks.
Visual design: I filled this project's UX and UI roles. For the visual design, I wanted something that reflected the upscale nature of the client. The design needed to be fresh and light, something that would be a joy to use. I wanted to use color to draw the user's eye to importing things. The images of the item would have their own color schemes and would keep the app from feeling sterile. I wanted to let the items give the app life and visual interest. All the other colors consulate to the user. Red for 24hr shipping, Orange for three-day ground, and green for items that were "BOPS" (bought online pick up in-store). When we reviewed the visual design with the client, they were stoked; they loved the use of color and the modern feel.
Development Handoff: Engineering was involved from day one. The handoff consisted of all the visual elements they would need to recreate the screens, along with the user journey maps showing how it all connected together. The app was deployed as an enterprise native iOS iPad application.