Apex Supply Chain
Apex hired us to redesign their automated vending and dispensing solutions for supply chains all over the world. The system was very complex and disorienting. Training new users proved a daunting and time heavy exercise. We traveled the country visiting their clients which consisted of industrial plants, factories, and manufacturing facilities to interview a wide range of users and observe their workflows in their natural habitat. They all needed one thing:
The guided experience
First, we set out to understand the business.
Interviewing stakeholders at all levels led us to understand how to categorize the users of the system.
Visualizing the system and how it works have our team a quick way to understand.
We interviewed real humans. We tried to imagine what it would take to guide them to becoming a confident user of the software. This helped us understand when in the experience people needed help.
People needed a "home" so we created a dashboard to better organize their workflow.
Adding users and associating permissions was a cumbersome experience in the old version. We made things as simple as they could be.
In the old experience adding a user was a 39 step process in some cases. There were no steps and no way of understanding where in the process you were. We added context and movement to the experience to indicate when and where users were going.
The old experience was full of forms. We used visuals to associate digital inputs with their real-world appearances like "PIN CODE".
Giving service reps a way to quickly prioritize their route based on the severity of issues.
We explored using augmented reality for service and support employees.