The Trouble Package
In the world of returnable packaging management, materials are exchanged between businesses (like customers & suppliers) in packages – either single use or returnable packages. To ensure safe exchange of materials between a company and its partners, there is a significant demand for returnable packaging. According to a survey by Auto Industry Action Group, the cost of replacing lost ‘reusable’ packaging in North America is $750 million per year. To keep such adversities in check, it’s important for the companies to document, organise and manage the exchange of returnable packages ensuring proper functioning and accountability. However, currently there is lack of integrated system that allows businesses to collaborate and create agreements efficiently. Today, the creation of agreements is manual and scattered. The agreements are created on paper, scanned and uploaded on the system which is a wasteful process. The information is scattered with multiple back and forth details lying in inboxes which may never reach the agreement contract.
SAP® Packaging Agreement Collaboration: the rescue
SAP® Packaging Agreement Collaboration provides a centralised collaboration platform to suppliers and customers who want to define standards of single use or returnable packaging materials used to deliver finished goods. End users like sales representatives, packaging planners and logistics planners can come together on the agreement/instructions document, exchange messages and information there, raise concerns and consent publishing the agreement/standard.
From the lens of User Experience (UX) Design
Design FAQs
It’s funny that this section starts with an FAQ, but I believe it’s worth it. While the world has advanced, the perception of design hasn’t. So dear reader, if you’re here thinking design is how the app looks then stay with me, you might change your mind. However, if you are aware design is not equal to aesthetics, you’ve earned my thumbs up to skip this FAQs section
- Is UX Design same as UI?
No, User Experience Design (UX) is a process to understand current system or users’ issues and devise meaningful solutions such that they’re relevant, usable, and easy to use. Whereas, User Interface (UI) design focuses on how user would interact with the device/system that is facilitated by visual design, information architecture etc. - Why is UX design important in a software?
UX design is crucial because it directly impacts how users interact with and perceive the product. A well-designed user experience enhances user satisfaction, increases retention, and ultimately contributes to the success of the product. By understanding user needs, behaviors, and preferences, we can create a product that is intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable to use. - Would a UX designer only support creating prototypes and UI mocks?
No, A UX Designer is entitled to providing a great experience to the end users of the product. This means, a UX Designer would ideally research about the system, issues, talk to end-users, Synthesize information through UX Journeys, Personas. Devise various concepts that would help the end users, conduct usability tests etc. It is a good idea to involve a UX Designer end-to-end in the product cycle right from discovery phase until testing. Creating prototypes is a smaller percent of the job description J
Design Methodology
Design became part of the product at an early stage. In the discovery phase, a customer workshop Mural was studied, and knowledge gaps were identified. Further discussions with the product team and customers enabled defining personas and user journeys. Current business process artifacts like documents were studied. Finally, the insights gathered from different businesses were condensed to form standard requirements. Next initial concepts and low-fidelity wireframes were designed and discussed with customers. Regular weekly/monthly calls were scheduled with customers only to learn more about the process and better the applications. While learning insights from customers and devising solutions, UX strategy was made to determine areas of problems and devise plans to continuously improve the product experience in the future. During the early phases of concepts when more information was needed from end-users, demo sessions were held to gather their feedback and make design decisions accordingly. As this progressed, prototype was continuously iterated and adapted to new learnings from the regular demo sessions. End users and their representatives became part of the demo sessions which enabled capturing different viewpoints of the processes. Finally, to test the usability of the app moderated sessions were conducted with end users. To diversify the end users, participants were recruited from the customers and externally recruited. Each app had 2-3 main features that were tested by giving participants tasks to perform. Task success rate was measured while users were performing the tasks. Post the test session, a questionnaire was shared with users to rate questions related to SUS and perceived usefulness. All the feedback was synthesized (using affinity mapping) and shared with the team to address priority items in the application.
Product Highlights powered by Design
Collaborative Draft: One fine day scrolling the guidelines, collaborative draft (which was still in progress & not released) was discovered. Drumrolls! With the initial learnings when it became apparent that the product must support collaboration, this seemed like the need for the hour – the collaborative draft. Unlike the traditional draft in Fiori where users cannot work on the same object page, collaborative draft enables inviting collaborators and editing a draft together at the same time.
Impact : Incorporating Collaborative Draft in the application is expected to reduce time spent waiting in finalizing the agreement and standards. All stakeholders can be on the same page (literally) rather than working in silos.
Chat: agreements and standards are exchanged back and forth between the businesses to arrive on common terms. It was learnt that this process is tedious and often happens via emails and calls where information is not always conveyed completely. To cater to this, chat became a part of the product. This would be a place for the collaborators to discuss the agreements while being in context and referring to the agreements.
Impact : This enables the collaborators to respond quicker to queries, reducing respond times and communicating effectively. This also allows consolidating the decisions in the application hence making tracking of decisions easier.
Visualizations: Let’s imagine if one must communicate ‘drilling 7 perpendicular holes at 5cm through three wooden planks arranged at 30 degree increasing angle’. Would it be easier to read this? What if someone just showed an image of it, wouldn’t that be easier to comprehend? While studying the artifacts of traditional standards, it was learnt that some information like alignment of labels and stickers on packages were being communicated visually. The nature of the information could only be communicated well so. Currently, the end-users draw images of these instructions, it became vital to also have this ability in the software. The Packaging Standard application has illustrations of various package stickers and alignment options which can be selected. It was also learnt that this critical information was not very well highlighted for the shopfloor operators to understand and work upon. Hence, along with illustrations, it was proposed to have the critical information in the document highlighted through colors and visual semantics.
Impact : This would reduce the time taken to comprehend packaging information by shopfloor users. An indirect effect of this is also expected in reducing the number of tickets raised for incorrect packaging.
Feedback
“Is this SAP Product? The UI looks great” was one of the first feedback received that gave a positive light to SAP Fiori horizon theme, the colored statuses, and the illustrations. From the usability test, participants agreed that collaboration and chatting was an important feature to improve communication. Using color to convey message like delays, questions raised by collaborator were regarded by participants. Improvements like providing better terminologies and context were taken during the test sessions and prioritized to enhance usability. The Packaging Agreements Collaboration was rated 81 System Usability Score (SUS) by 12 participants. “This is the first-time customers have purchased the product with no questions asked”, highlighted the product team. Collaboration is not only a theme limited to the application's name but the process of building this application. Early UX involvement, continuous customer feedback, design & product decisions favouring easier interaction built a good design product.
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