Understanding the Problem

"Sales channels like Etsy and Shopify are great at posting listings but leave the owner hanging when it comes to fulfillment and management of orders. That's where ShipRelay excels" says Mike, the CEO of ShipRelay. Mike is an entrepreneur friend who reached to me one day for help because his customer support team was overloaded with emails from his clients who were having a hard time navigating and using his product.

The Client
Mike owns a start-up company. ShipRelay is a responsive retail (Saas) platform that specializes in back-office order management. They provide on-demand shipping, warehousing, and fulfillment management services for small businesses. www.shiprelay.com.

‍I noticed his goals were:

Deliver a prized experience and great service
Clean and intuitive interface to minimize customer service
Raise more money from investors
Be able to charge clients more $$

ShipRelay's Clients
Mike said he serves small commodities and subscription based business owners shipping to an international market. They serve clients from the ages ranging from 25 to 45 years old. Their goals and needs were:

Full control over fulfillment process of orders with real time updates
Ability to personalize orders by bulk
Fully integrate into their sales channels like Etsy, Shopify, etc.
Ability to "shop" for the best shipping prices on the market all in one spot

Diving Right Into Ideation

Upon first impressions of the platform, I found that it was sensory overload. There was a lot of important information and critical functions that needed to be displayed. I devised a list of quick fixes that would give the platform a nice face lift.

Sketching Potential Futures

While keeping user-friendly interface principles in mind, I work through usability design challenges by sketching out possible concepts of how processes can look and function.

Playful Iterations

By translating these concepts from sketches into high-fidelity mockups, it actualizes the ideas and make it easier to communicate functionality to stakeholders. By making it pretty doesn't mean it is functional. Designing in high-fidelity allows me to focus on making sure the process and the experience is right.

Close Developer Feedback

I worked hand and hand with the Chief Technology Officer to ensure that the right changes are implemented.

He educated and advised me what would work and what wouldn't work. 3 rounds of iterations and 60 screens later, we arrived at the final product.

The Final Product

Improved Legibility and Readability

The homepage dashboard allows Users to have a quick glance at their platform data. Users reported light font weight and small size of title texts were difficult to read.

Resizing and reorganizing components helps the User focus at the most important information at the top. I also added color contrast to titles and buttons which improves readability against the stark light background.

Reduced Clutter and Confusion

A selling feature of ShipRelay's product is its ability to sync different sales channels into the platform. The top navigation represents all the sales channels linked to ShipRelay's platform. However, there is no sense of orientation when the User lands here.

Implementing card display opposed to a table display houses secondary information that doesn't need to be seen all the time. If the User wants to modify a specific sales channel, they can click on the cards to have full access to advanced, automatic, and carrier settings.

Simple and Streamlined

"Shipment Requests" represent a coalition of outbound orders coming in from all sales channels. For Users managing a load of orders they receive, they must be able to quickly glance and understand the items bought and order status.

ShipRelay offers a competitive feature that automatically "shops" different carriers for packaging and shipment quotes for the User. The feature's essential information is highlighted on each row. Users can also expand each row to view and edit order details by toggling the embedded tab navigation.

Refined Affordances & Microinteractions

"Relay Tickler" is the central communication method between the user and the system. Not only does it provide real time updates, but allows the user to take immediate action within the row. "Think actionable messages".
Users can take direct action to resolve the message by hovering over the row.

By hiding the green button in a hover microinteraction, it declutters information in the row and makes user-platform interaction more interesting.

Pop-ups and Color Only Where It Matters

By clicking on the "Relay Tickler" live update, the User can view history of messages and updates. The User can also directly message ShipRelay's support team. This modal is like an instant messenger.

I incorporated colors and type hierarchy adds personality and reinforces brand memorability. Users can depend on the orange and electric blue throughout the platform as a means for navigation, call to action, or if something requires attention.

What I learned

This project was very challenging because I was thrown into the world of logistics and fulfillment and was pushed to learn the language the system speaks. Working with Jesse (CTO) has taught me the balance between breaking traditional UI patterns as long as it works and makes sense.

The project was handed off to ShipRelay's development team to integrate into their platform. Although I did not get the chance to formally test it with their clients and users, Id did light A/B testing with my peers and the redesigned platform was well received.

Next Steps

Test with actual clients to gain further insights on what worked and what didn't work. Due to the project scope and time constraints, testing was not the focus of this project.

Further Recommendations

Account for various button and platform states, refine flows even more, and make affordances more clear.

Testimonials

"Samantha has been a pleasure to work with. Her attention to detail, communication, and ability to fully grasp our software's workflow from a UI/UX standpoint to make it more intuitive and fluid for our customers has improved our customer support significantly."

- Mike W. (CEO)

"Samantha has been working with us on a UX revamp of our core site. Her ability to organize and present information and workflows - a challenge for any avid designer - is a testament to her talents and critical thinking ability as it comes to innovative and elegant design solutions."

- Jesse P. (CTO)

Simplifying ShipRelay's
Logistic Platform

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Understanding the Problem