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CASE STUDY
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LOGISTICS & E-COMMERCE
The 'Shipments' module to replace Trello for managing shipments along the e-commerce supply chain
THE STORY
Unineed is a global e-commerce platform with its own inbuilt ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software XTOPUS. It was a tool built by the developers out of prebuilt templates and UI libraries, and improvements were made, bugs were fixed based on the feedback from users over Microsoft Teams group chats.
SEPT 2023
I joined Unineed as the founding Product designer. I was hired with the intentions to improve the UI mainly, but my work has scoped much beyond that.
Now...
I act as the voice for the users, improving their relationship with XTOPUS through reduced friction and improved work efficiency. XTOPUS is much more than a regular ERP, it is now a personalised tool that listens and understands its users' needs better with consistent and redefined interaction principles.
THE WHY, WHO, WHAT, WHEN & HOW
The Why: Shipments module was designed as the solution to replace Trello boards used for facilitating and
tracking shipments along the e-commerce supply chain.
Who was it for: It was designed for marketing (8 members), warehouse (15+ members) and buying (6 members) teams.
The Team: Product Manager + Engineering Team + Users + Me (Designer+Researcher)
Timeline: Sept. 2024 - Jul. 2025
Tools: Jira, FigJam, Figma, Microsoft Clarity, Lyssna
Metrics: Time taken to create a shipment, time taken to find a shipment, no. of shipments created, time saved in discrepancies, etc
THE PROBLEM SPACE
What are the known user problems, needs & motivations?
- Lack of an in-house platform to facilitate shipments
- Inefficient workflow, cognitive overload & human errors
- Time lapse in moving shipments manually to the next stages
What are the known business problems?
- Unable to scale the business further up
- Unorganized data with Trello boards
- Privacy & Security
- Limited decision making capabilities
GOALS & CONSIDERATIONS
- Understanding of the current workflows, operations and communication between multiple teams
- Understanding of the industry and deeper user needs, pain points and motivations?
- Understanding of the users' interaction with Trello boards (time spent on creating & tracking shipments, pain points, error prone areas, etc)
The main constraint was that I wasn’t replacing a tool, I was replacing a behaviour. The design had to introduce structure without breaking the flexibility operations teams relied on in Trello. To give a few examples,
CONSTRAINTS:
- Familiar mental models of users (cards, color coded status blocks, comments as updates, etc)
- Non-linear nature of shipments
- Lack of a happy path
EDGE CASES:
- Fast Track Shipments
- Shipments that get split at Northern Ireland
- Shipments that need attested import invoice
BUSINESS GOALS:
- Reduce human errors
- One system with full visibility & potential scalability
- Flexible, customised & secure
- Better analytics & decision-making
THE BULLSEYE CUSTOMER RESEARCH
Tapping into the different types of user persona...
MARKETING TEAM USER:
Demographics: Age: 21-28 | Works from an office space | Familiar with B2B tools (Repricer, Google Analytics, etc)
WAREHOUSE STAFF:
Demographics: Age: 25-50 | Works from the warehouse (faces temporary challenges like wearing gloves in winter, no dedicated computer, noisy environment, etc) | Only uses XTOPUS
FIELD RESEARCH :
Ask -> Observe -> Collect/Record -> Interpret -> Consolidate
I had 1v1 contextual inquiries with users from both teams, and some of the following questions were asked.
MARKETING USER:
1. Can you walk me through the process of creating a new shipment?
2. At which point does the warehouse team pick up this request?
3. Why is the shipment named this way?
4. Why & how do you need the product's FBASKU & FNSKU?
5. What are the most frequent routes?
6. How do you communicate about shipments with the warehouse team?
7. Can you tell me about shipments that don't reach as expected?
8. Can you walk me through the process of checking in shipments?
WAREHOUSE STAFF:
1. Can you walk me through the process of creating a new shipment?
2. What are the challenges you face while putting a shipment together?
3. How would you notify out of stock products to the marketing team?
4. Do you encounter any other challenges during this phase?
5. Is it always the same person responsible for picking & packing a shipment?
6. Can you walk me through the Amazon shipment tool?
7. Can you walk me through all the possible routes?
I collected the recordings, notes and had interpretation sessions with the Product Manager. Some of the consolidated insights can be found below.
INSIGHTS:
Few things that helped us understand through research.
- Creating a shipment is not a single workflow, but two mental models colliding
- Marketing thinks in SKUs, timelines, marketplaces and value
- Warehouse staff think in boxes, weight, availability, routes & physical constraints
User needs, pain points and motivations from the research consolidated below..
MARKETING USER
Pain Points:
- No clear handoff, marketing team don't know exactly when the warehouse takes ownership
- Status changes hide in Teams group chats & Trello comments
- SKU anxiety, out of stock or availability worries
- Unaware if the warehouse team has seen the shipment request until the shipping plan is printed
Needs:
- Clear visibility and transfer of ownership
- Live stock update, visible available stock
- Clear idea on where a shipment is, what went wrong & who is responsible now
- Automatic status update
Motivations:
- Achieve the shipment target per month
- Send fully intact shipments on time
- Generate more revenue for the company
- Protect rankings & maintain third party marketplace's trust
WAREHOUSE STAFF
Pain Points:
- Shipment requests come as instructions, not realities
- Potential stock discrepancies
- Box constraints
- Trello assumes a single owner, but it could be different people handling picking and packing
- Difficulty to remember multiple workflows, carriers and instructions for different routes
- Prone to human errors, switch between B2B & B2C shipments often
- Noisy environments & other distractions
- Feels complete ownership for the shipments instead of shared accountability
- Difficulty communicating out-of-stock or any other issues with the marketing team
- Slow response from the marketing team, leading to a shipment hold
- Time constraints, shift changes, lunch breaks, etc
Needs:
- Clear visibility and transfer of ownership
- A single point of truth
- Ability to adjust quantities, flag blockers and communicate faster with the marketing team
- Automatic status update
- Reduced dependency on memory & experience
Motivations:
- Minimise rework
- Avoid being blamed
- Keep operations flowing smoothly
- Achieve daily & monthly targets
- Finish on time
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The needs and requirements were split into 5 stages to make it easier for both the teams, with Draft and Request stages being handled by the marketing team, while the Build stage is handled by the warehouse team until they dispatch the shipment, after which the ownership goes back to the marketing team again.
- Draft stage (collect shipment level data such as origin, destination, comments, product addition, etc)
- Request stage (transfer the request to the warehouse team, allow for limited stock errors, out of stock, etc)
- Build stage (warehouse team to pick up requests and fulfill/edit products as per inventory)
- In Transit stage (Add tracking details, track live updates)
- Delivery stage (check-ins, add discrepancies, resolve shipment errors, report missing shipments, etc)
IDEATE & ITERATE
Based on conversations with the users, the following map shows the existing user journey.
The proposed user journey map by replacing Trello with the XTOPUS shipment module would look like this.
DESIGN APPROACH
- Being a designer who likes to often take inspiration from the real world, I imagined enclosing the shipment in a card imitating a real shipment box, and clicking on it to expand to see the contents inside.
- With the user currently familiar with Trello's color coded status cards, I tried to implement a similar approach for users to feel effortless while moving through multiple stages.
- Progressive Disclosure to let the users focus on only one task at a time.
- Design for automation & limit human inputs wherever possible.
TEST & ITERATE
After a lot of testing with users and making infinite number of changes that can be seen below.
GOODBYE TRELLO!
The Trello board users had to bid goodbye to...
WHAT WE SHIPPED FIRST...
The first iteration of the shipments module...
LATEST FEEDBACK
By March 2024, the design was handed over and July 2024, the first iteration was deployed. Based on testing with users, the following feedback was received from the users...
1. Have the ability to filter by destination country
2. Amazon FBA ID's should be visible on the main screen alongside other key info such as Shipment name, tracking numbers, shipment status etc
3. Have the ability to search by tracking number.
4. Currently doesn't look like there is an option to close shipments going to ESWH, so we will need the ability to do this.
5. Should be a status for both 'closed without error' and 'closed with error' where we can filter for shipments under these status'
6. Much smaller issue here but when clicking the 'actions' button, you cannot click anywhere on the screen to get rid of the filter dropdown, you have to go back to action button and click again which is a bit of an inconvenience
7. Amazon FBA warehouse currently is not in the list of filters for destination, although this will not matter as much once we can filter by destination country.
WHERE WE ARE NOW...
OUTCOMES CREATED
Replaced a flexible but opaque Trello workflow with a structured system that improved shipment visibility, accountability, and cross-team trust without slowing day-to-day operations
Today, there are more than
✅ 900+ shipments created
✅ Shipments of value more than £80,000 transported
✅ Business scaled up
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY:
✅ Reduced shipment status ambiguity
✅ Cut down the average shipment creation time from 3+ minutes to less than a minute
✅ Clear ownership, visibility & accountability
BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES:
✅ Shipments became one of the most-used features of XTOPUS, with users favouriting Shipment pages as one of their top 5 pages.
✅ Users are now proactive in finding stale shipments
✅ Users have a clear, concise and consolidated view of the shipments for an improved decision making
✅ Users transitioned from Trello with minimal onboarding, indicating strong mental-model alignment
What did I learn as a designer?
It is our responsibility to design systems around humans and not expect humans to adapt systems. Time pressure, environmental friction and physical constraints are things that my assumptions (Users will update the system when a shipment gets delivered) failed to address.So, it has taught mshipments.e to always have a room for the unknown factors or constraints while designing a system as complicated as Shipments.
Communication ≠ Comprehension - As the development team was working from different country in a different timezone, they had to pick up the design and notes from Figma & FigJam. Even though we had two calls per week to discuss, there were a few understanding gaps, which could have been avoided if I were proactive in communicating about certain behaviours, interaction principles from the start. This has taught me the importance of being proactive when it comes to documenting handoffs and making sure the developers actually understand it.
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