TRACKING TOOL
Streamline and track aid shipments
KEY ACTIVITIES
Workshop, User Flows, Sitemap, Desktop UI
Overview
Aid Pioneers is an NGO that sends medical procurement and humanitarian aid to crisis-hit locations. I designed an MVP to establish the foundation for a centralized tool to manage its shipments.
Objective
To build a tool to streamline aid planning and distribution, and help the NGO to be more efficient in their aid projects and working with their partners.
Business Problem
The company’s growing shipments are becoming harder to manage with Google Sheets, and tracking them in crisis-hit zones is especially challenging. Without a centralized system, it's difficult to get an overview of shipment statuses.
Solution
A scalable, centralized tool for creating, updating, and tracking shipments would provide users with clearer guidance and a more comprehensive overview of their aid projects.
Status
The project is still on the phase 1. Two developers are working on building the platform with update and create functions.
UNDERSTAND
UX Mapping Workshop
We decided to focus on the Ukraine Aid Project and started the project with a workshop. The co-founder, the founder associate, and the tech lead participated.
Fig 1. Miro Board Screenshot: Spreadsheets and Mapped Attributes - Session 2
We discussed the existing tools, aid processes and their needs in the first session. Then, we mapped the attributes to the different stages in shipment journey: Planned, Packing List, Shipped, Delivered. (Fig 1).
DEFINE
The Scope and Goal
After the workshop, the tech lead and I defined the scope of the tool, target users, and worked on the site map.
Target Users
Coordinators: Use the aid shipment tracking tool to plan, organize, and oversee the delivery of aid shipments to crisis-hit locations.
Partners: use the aid shipment tracking tool to fill out aid supplies form (packing list) and monitor the status and progress of aid shipments that are relevant to their specific projects or shipments.
The Scope
Phase 1: A tool to have essential functions for creating, updating, tracking, and documenting.
Phase 2: Designing a dashboard to give aid projects an overview, partner view to share the aid shipment information, the status and more
Phase 3: Advanced feature: packing list creation with partners and QR tracking for shipment
Site Map
The site map was created considering the three phases and target users. The Overview and details pages were added later.
Fig 2. Sitemap Creation
DEFINE
The Userflows: Create and Update
I created user flows based on the mapped attributes and defined stages, taking into account the various use cases.
ideate
Wireframes
The tech lead initially proposed using a large, expandable form. Later, I proposed to divide the shipment page into two tabs to prioritize essential information and focus on the user task. As a result, the form was relocated to the 'Details' tab.
Fig. 5: Initial workflows for creating and updating a shipment; an overview section was added later
dESIGN & PROTOTYPE
User Interface
The design offers a simple yet colorful user interface, prioritizing key information with visual cues like color coded elements and a live map to enhance user clarity and experience.
THE RESULT
Outcomes and Learning
On our journey to build an MVP to an, here were the findings and outcomes:
Setting the foundation
The main challenge was taking the product from 0 to 1. Now, the NGO has a clear roadmap and vision for streamlining their aid shipment process.
Working with non-tech
I learned that while working with a non-tech client, our tech jargon is not working. To have clearer discussions and better collaboration, it's essential to use simple language and incorporate more visual work.
Time-Aware Reflections
I would interview employees involved in other aid projects to better define the user problem and gain insights into those projects. This would also help me assess the scalability of the MVP more effectively and frame a user problem.
User Testing
Unfortunately, no official user testing was conducted because the stakeholders, who were also the primary users, were directly involved in the process.
UX Analytics
To enhance the tool, I would analyze situations where users manually update shipment statuses and examine error rates when entering shipment details. Gathering Customer Effort Score (CES) for managing shipments would also provide valuable insights for improvement.