ShipOut WMS Redesign
Increased the # of orders processed per day from 5,000 to 60,000.
Overview
In this project, I worked closely with PMs, designers, and engineers to carry out designs that allow warehouse users to manage and process orders more efficiently.
My Role
Product Designer
Design tools
Figma & Axure
Team
2 Product Managers, 3 Product Designers, 1 UI Designer, 2 Front End Engineers
Duration
May 2020 - August 2020
Background.
ShipOut WMS (Warehouse Management System) is an enterprise SaaS product providing a comprehensive range of features to help private warehouse owners manage shipments, orders, and inventory and streamlined the workflow involved to allow for a smooth fulfillment process.
Challenge.
We continually got feedback from the customer service team that users are making complaints about the current system because they think it's not efficient to use. Our major challenge is to find out why they think the system is not efficient, what are the major causes, so we could solve these issues one by one in our next round of revision.
Research.
Contextual Interview - What are the pain points?
We visited one of our seed user’s warehouse and asked workers to walk us through their workflow to understand how they deal with packages and process orders on a daily basis. We also observed their behaviors, expressions, body language, as well as the warehouse environment to explore the pain points they are experiencing when using our system.
Learn about workflow of workers
Understand shelf management logic 
Observe how workers manage packages offline
Learn about receipt and documentation involved Problem.
The user research provided lots of insights and helped us realize the issue of inefficiency is mainly caused by:
Users can’t find what they need easily due to unclear information architecture
Lack of batch processing feature to allow users manage multiple orders at once
Unreasonable page layout design for warehouse context
Information display redesign.
Change 1.
Navigation bar redesign
Change 2.
Setting menu redesign
Change 3.
Adjust page layout
Feature redesign.
Change 1.
Add feature of multiple order selection
Change 2.
Allow user to edit packing material in batch
Impact.
According to the data from the QA team, the total number of orders processed per day (including but not limited to outbound, inbound, return, etc.) has increased 1100% after the revision launched. We also got immediate feedback from warehouse users that they really love the new layout and features. Now they could process many orders within several clicks.
Reflection.
Understanding context is essential for enterprise product design
Before I actually start to design, I spent around 2-3 weeks to figure out what the business model of ShipOut, understand the background knowledge of logistic field, and also remember all the related terminology in order to follow up in meetings. The process is super challenging but very important since the problem scope is much more complicated than consumer products.
Communication is the key for a smooth collaboration
Different from usual school projects, the internship allows me to experience the working style of real industry, where I need to not only work with other designers, but also other stakeholders including PM and engineers. A clear rationale of design will be very helpful in meetings to convey ideas and reasoning, thus let others understand my standpoint. Also, always stay in touch with each other to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Chase for a “complete” design
A “complete” design requires comprehensive thinking while designing. This involves many aspects, for example, using the correct state of button components to guide user along the right flow, considering edge cases and provide corresponding guidance to make sure user won’t just get stuck somewhere. A “closed loop” in logic will brew a smooth user flow and experience.
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