Shipments Loadout Redesign
The Client: Ardent Mills
The Role: UX/UI designer & researcher
The Timeline: In progress
Ardent Mills is a leading flour milling company in the US with over 40 mills in operation. Correctly filling and shipping orders to clients on schedule is integral to living up to their brand promise. This project involves creating a streamlined shipping experience for the company’s operations platform.
The Context
A module with two experiences
PRISM is Ardent Mills’ custom-built application, designed to keep each mill running like a well-oiled machine. It’s made of several modules, each dedicated to a distinct area of the milling process. The Shipments Loadout module provides users with everything they need to load and ship orders seamlessly.
Before I joined the company, the Shipments Loadout module underwent a redesign. The new design was rolled out alongside the old one, giving users the freedom to switch between the two. The hope was that users would ease into the new experience before any further steps were taken.
The Old Experience
This no-nonsense approach, affectionately referred to as the “old experience”, is your classic data table. Users navigate the data by searching and filtering each column individually. The loadout order types—pack, bulk and feed—are separated into their own pages.
The New Experience
The latest version, a.k.a. the “new experience”, was transformed into a sleek data card. The loadout order types—pack, bulk, and feed—were brought together into a single, unified page, with the search and filter functions operating on a global level.
The Problem
Supporting two versions hindering future development
For two years, the company has been maintaining two Shipments Loadout experiences. As you can imagine, supporting both has doubled our design and development costs, putting a damper on future development plans. Plus, having two experiences has led to inconsistencies in process among the mills. It was clear that we needed to streamline and reduce down to one.
Discovery
Initial Survey
Before taking any steps forward, we needed a baseline. A seven-question survey was sent out that covered role, experience preference & satisfaction, feature value ranking, and open feedback. From the 64 respondents we found that 40% preferred the old experience, 23.5% preferred the new, and 25% liked both for different reasons.
Better understanding roles, tasks and preferences
Now that we had some initial insight into where our users stood, we needed to dig into why. We interviewed seven people to find out:
What are the main tasks for their job role?
What are their goals when using Shipments Loadout?
What experience do they use and why?
Is there specific functionality that is missing from either experience?
Who are these users anyway?
In the world of Shipments Loadout, the four distinct user groups have their own unique roles with one common mission: to ensure the customer receives the right product, on time.
Oliver the Operator
His role is to…ensure flour is loaded correctly and on time.
He needs to…determine what needs to be loaded. Verify orders are filled out completely.
Quinn the Quality Manager
Her role is to…ensure orders meet quality standards and customer specifications.
She needs to…enter & verify shipment data and troubleshoot issues with orders.
Sally the Scheduler
Her role is to…schedule the production of orders most efficiently for mill and pack.
She needs to…check the status of orders and help team recover from misses.
Mark the Manager
His role is to…keep a high-level view to ensure the team is staying on top of orders.
He needs to…verify that scheduled orders are packed, identify if loads have not been picked up.
Key Insights
Users split between the two experiences
We discovered that users were roughly split between the two experiences. While there was no strong correlation between preference and role, there was one minor exception. Manager roles filter order data heavily, which they found easier in the old experience.
“I’m comfortable, why switch?”
It became obvious after the interviews that old experience users clung to it out of comfort, a lack of training, and many weren’t even aware of a new option! These insights highlighted the need to have a well-thought-out plan to transition users to a final solution and retire the old experience.
What else did the old experience users think?
Users felt the table layout was easier to view large amounts of data
Users liked the ability to sort and filter the table for specific information
A recurring opinion was that the order status is more obvious
A few things the new experience users thought;
Users love the new look
They don’t switch back to the old experience unless they need a specific functionality
Users really like the global search and filter functions
Solution
A hybrid approach with improved sorting and filtering
While the four user groups had different tasks and goals, the common thread was their interaction with order data. Users consistently searched, filtered, and sorted the order data to complete their respective tasks.
My proposed solution is a hybrid between the two experiences. We wanted to maintain the modern form of the new experience, as well as the features that users really liked. In addition, we wanted to incorporate desired functionality from the old experience and make the data more familiar and identifiable. To do this, we did the following:
Made data labels more visible
Moved secondary information into expandable section
Added sorting functionality per column
Relocated filters to the top of the page and made the right info panel collapsible
Added status and date to filterable variables
A second solution to test
We really want to be sure our design meets our users’ needs, so I designed a second solution to test. Both solutions have the same functionality, but slightly different approaches to the filters and the organization of data. This solution simplifies the table even more, laying out all data in a single row.
Next Steps
Validate Solutions with usability testing
In the coming weeks, we will set out to do moderated and unmoderated test with users. I built a prototype for each solution that has the user complete tasks related to the core functionality: searching, filtering, and sorting. This test will help us validate if users can complete their daily tasks and identify their preferred solution and rationale.
Revisions and the final solution
From there, we can decide which solution to move forward with as well as make final revisions. While we know users have their preferences, we will build a solid change management plan to transition users to the final solution that is developed and sunset the existing experiences.
Some other projects
Creating clarity through improved alert messaging.
Enhancing independent language learning through stories.
Creating a seamless appointment booking experience.