This was the hardest project of my career. Here's why.

Research

After initially describing my typically design process that includes research and isights gathering, the client's leadership decided that due to severe time constraints, they were fine with the potential lack of traditionally gathered user data to get initial design idea off the ground.

This is a very typical trade-off that happens in consulting because many clients are pressed for time and we need to create value for them fast. We had to have a gritty startup mindset

UI Kit Created From Scratch

After a thorough walk-through of an existing tool that the reps use for ordering and quotes, I moved on to starting the mid-fidelity component library. These components all had to be made from scratch since the client didn't have an in-house design team or a marketing department that kept a style guide.

Design

With all this and a limited amount of time, I prioritized what I was tackling first...assortment sheet creation.

At first I created a path in the top right for people to see where they were in the process but after some discussion with stakeholders the path was removed to conserve space.

V1

Final

Why Assortment Sheets first?

Because this is the first process bleeds into both buy sheets and PO (purchase order) creation.

Then I went into creating the Buy Sheeting mockups.

This was the most challenging part because buyers need to see their targets at all times when creating a buy sheet.

"The main problem with buy sheets is that the buyers were creating orders and sending those orders to vendors all through excel. This also served as their versioning technique. It's a time-consuming and confusing process and, if done wrong, costly." -notes from legacy research

Targets: Financial or operational metrics set by the retail management. This can include planned sales, gross margin return on investment (GMROI), or units per store per week 

Before, reps would toggle between two different systems to see their targets and their buy plan. Now, the targets are front and center and update automatically as they build the buy plan.

Lastly buy sheets flow into Purchase Orders (POs). POs are pretty straight forward. They serve as receipts for the buy sheets. They are the last step before sending a vendor a buy sheet. Before getting PO approval, they can take a number of actions and review their final selections.

This was just a taste of the entire process.

If you want to know more about tradeoffs, what didn't make it into production, and challenges, get in touch with me for the full presentation!