The need to improve the accuracy and speed of managing multiple products

A business needs to store hundreds of different products across various locations, with new supplies and transactions every week. To keep up with customer demand, the business must track and manage inventory strategically. Mistakes and delays in this process can significantly impact business performance.

Thus, with Oboda as a platform focused on digitizing these processes, it is important to prioritize the system’s design as better usability would lead to long-term success. This should consider the following:

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The digitization of warehouse systems requires employees to quickly adapt

It was discovered that employees of these inventory systems are not particularly tech-savvy. This leads to frequent messages asking for help, clarification, or feature requests, thereby slowing down efficiency and adding extra time and effort from the developers.

To address this, they need an intuitive, user-friendly interface that guides them through processes without extensive training. As the first designers to work on this project, we accepted the challenge of overhauling the interface with clearer flows and fresher visuals.

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In context of being in a warehouse, users are in constant movement

Mobile responsiveness as a priority

As most interactions with the inventory system occur on mobile devices, we first prioritized a mobile-responsive design as it was previously not been accounted for. Keeping the context of users in mind guided a lot of the design decisions we made:

Adding more clarity into flows

To make the system more intuitive, we revisited the user flows and identified areas where processes can be connected. Instead of navigating through multiple areas, users could now perform tasks more efficiently within a unified interface. Adding to this, clear and immediate system feedback was incorporated to help users understand the outcomes of their actions, reducing errors and increasing confidence in using the system.

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Designing for scalability

Aside from simplifying processes, as Oboda was in its early stage and getting more used by varying businesses, another set of questions came up:

How might we make the system adaptable to various industries and their specific requirements?

How might we ensure the system supports flexible tagging and coding options to meet diverse business needs?

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Better tracking and reporting provide valuable data for informed decision-making and strategic planning

Improved tracking and reporting capabilities were integrated into the system, providing valuable data for informed decision-making and strategic planning. This empowered businesses to analyze their inventory patterns and optimize their operations further for its effectiveness.

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Design System

To further scale the product and accommodate the growth of the business, a design system was built to allow for easy updates and additions to address users' needs. This ensures the platform can adapt and expand seamlessly over time.

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Impact

The redesigned inventory management system achieved several key improvements in business performance:

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Takeaways

1. Explore conventions but think out of the box. Understand existing design conventions from competitors while also seeking innovative solutions to address unique problems and tailor the product to meet user needs and product goals.
2. There is never a perfect solution to solve a problem. While we had more ownership and freedom over the designs, we don’t just design whatever comes into our heads and call it a day. Instead, we continuously experimented with different design studies and collect feedback to determine what we think is best for users.
3. Some sort of collaboration is better than none. I only had 1 co-designer on this project, and despite the large scope, we had to strategize with the way we work. While we assigned ourselves to different pages, we constantly discussed what needs to be improved together. Aside from this, we had weekly calls with Oboda to review and revise designs, especially with how heavy the project is with systems and processes.