Simplifying the mountain of tasks for running an Amazon business.

To make the best, you need to 'peek over the fence' and learn from what others are doing well. Understanding what is good and bad here provided a clearer path to creating an app design that sets this application apart from the competition.

To better understand who will be using this application and understanding how they will use it, I carried out user interviews with rough wireframes and mock-ups to find out all the details we would need to develop a user centred experience.

The user testing gave us real world feedback prior to launching the application. User testing can be illuminating and really helps to validate the product as users will often not interact with your tool as you may have imagined. I don’t assume to know everything, my approach is to observe what somebody does with the tool instead of coaching them on how to use it. If there’s a source of frustration then I mould the user interface to the user and not the other way around.

What tools are we going to build with to achieve the goals? What works and what is going to be the tech debt? To develop an advanced application, with the future in mind, I looked at the development team and the skill set and the development frameworks.

The next stage involved planning the project. Having established the functions that were key to the application I could create the information architecture and structure.

This involved organising and labeling the content for the application. Through the information architecture map we could understand not only how each piece of the application fits together, but also how each item relates to all the other items within the application structure. This allows for setting out the objectives of each screen and the role the screen plays for the user.This involves process mapping and streamlining the work processes. These maps help plan projects and allow the team to visually communicate the important details rather than writing extensive directions through a product.

User journeys help the team understand user behaviour and anticipate how users will interact with a new application. By understanding this we are opening up opportunities to design a service that anticipates the users needs and provides them with the most effective tools.

Once we had a project plan and had established what the key functions and important features were that we had to design and develop I set about creating the main user flows and interactions.

The user interface is an essential part of the user experience for any application, from experience I know that users are very swift to judge designs both on usability and likeability.

In this phase I concentrated on building screens and interactions that users would find highly usable and efficient. The buttons and other common elements had to perform predictably so users could unconsciously use them everywhere. It was important with this application to maintain high discoverability. Clearly label icons and include well-indicated affordances.

In creating the main screens I was able to create and style the navigational components, input controls, the buttons, text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdown lists, and the modal windows.

Usability testing is all about getting real people to interact with the application and observing their behaviour and reactions to it. We started this process by watching session recordings where we had tasked users with performing actions and observing how they approached the tasks. I moved on to observing users in real time using and interacting with the application, this allowed me to adapt the UI and the user flows and build a better more effective, efficient, and enjoyable experience for users.
A thorough understanding of the contexts users will find themselves in when making choices is crucial. I wanted to create the illusion that users aren’t interacting with a device so much as they’re trying to attain goals directly and as effortlessly as possible.

The MVP version of the product was launched in June 2018 for web and mobile. We have continued to refine the product and develop additional functions.