In this project, we took a Design Sprint approach through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers and managers. We can shortcut the endless-debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week, fast-forward into the future to see the finished product and customer reactions before making any expensive commitments.
$800,000
Monthly Sale
8000+
Followers
6%
Sales Growth
Identify the inventory status, and edit his Min/Max inventory for every SKU(stock-keeping unit).
Need an obvious alert when an SKU reaches that "critical" level and place an order quickly.
The product becomes too complex for the average user to understand the workflow.
We wanted to create a simple user flow for average merchants - from editing the min/max inventory to receiving warnings and navigating them to make replenishment easily.
Option 1: Change Bar Scale
√ The size of the bars stays so the chart looks very clean and clear.
× When the number of min inventory is different for different SKU, it is confusing to see the size of the bar is the same.
Option 2: Change Bar Size
√ Easier for users to understand the inventory doesn't change but the warning line changes.
× As the min inventory bar becomes shorter, the other bar become longer.
We summarized three main problems after the user testing and what caused these misunderstanding.
Misunderstanding of Min Stock
According to the users, they understand min inventory as the lowest inventory which is approaching to 0.
Inventory Calculation
The ideal inventory is calculated based on what's my daily rate of sale long term while the safety inventory is current ADS.
Ratio or actual number
The current design shows the actual number, which is easy to understand but causes many problems.
In order to solve the problems, we spent two weeks trying different design methods and had several iterations.
Rename min as safety and max as ideal to prevent misunderstanding.
Provide explanations of the calculation of safety and ideal inventory.
Make the users focus on status of the inventory instead of numbers.
Challenge 1
The background color of the total inventory reflects the status to reduce the cognitive load. The faded edges, representing the ratio help the users to focus on the center. The tooltip will also help the user to understand the calculation of safety and ideal inventory.
Challenge 2
Users can make edits and see how the status changes responsively. They can also go back to the default number easily.
Challenge 3
When the inventory drops below the critical line, the little red dot and popover will remind the user to make replenishment.
Challenge 4
When the lead time of the certain product is changed, the default number of safety inventory will also be updated. If the users didn't use the default number, he will get a reminder to make updates.
The safety and ideal inventory new feature makes it easier for merchants to manage their inventory and place replenishment.
We use Ant Design System and apply practical components to meet our needs, working on flexible customization and expansion.
Although this is a minor feature, I learned how complex it could be when considering user
s' different hypotheses, possible misunderstandings, and potential impact on other parts. If given more time, I would do more usability testing and add more functions, such as filters, important SKUs, bulk editing, etc.