Hastings Deering Service apps integration with unified platform

The Challenge

Hastings Deering service operations have specific workflows for delivery. As the company evolve, the technology have lagged behind forcing workshop teams to adapte and diverge. These fractures in workflows and technology meant that our employees had to do duplicate work across multiple systems and apps, wasting time and resources. Whenever they switched between apps, they were met with different reading experience and giving them an inconsistent experience with our brand.

Our digital transformation team has put forward a scalable unified platform  solution. Adopting this solution enables delivering high value to the business operations by providing employees with role based utilitarian tools that assist them in their day to day operations.
The project will work alongside the unified platform program to integrate all the operation apps into one seamless experience, enhancing workflows.

The unified platform provides a rich API layer allowing integration with third party systems easily and enabling scaling of applications throughout Hastings Deering. With this significant step forward, data duplication is minimised, time to market is significantly improved, development and operation costs are reduced and user needs are met

Applications to be unified

• inService (in progress)
• inSales (on hold)
• inParts (on hold)

Role
Senior UX/UI Designer

Platform
Flutter (Mobile)
Contentful (Web)

Project Management
Agile Scrum Methodology

Tools
Figma, Figma Token, Design System, User Testing, Hotjar, UX/UI Design and Research, Adobe Suite

Prototype

The Process

The project was split into 2 parts to work on. Firstly we are to integrate the application into the portal and secondly to enhance the current application features. My process with each section was based on the following Lean UX process which was to incorporate the key phases of Discovery, Research, Ideation and Implementation.

Gathering Insights

There are several ways to gather insights and these are the following I’ve approach for the initial discovery:

1. Employee Journey – Step in the shoes of our customers and go through the process to understand what customers are experiencing.
2. Workshops – Conduct workshops to understand employees perspective
3. Analytics – Reviewing GA & Power BI results base on the last 6 months data collected.

My research encompassed:

• Understanding the business goals and user needs
• Uncovering pain points with the existing user journey

Analytics data gathering and Workshop with employees to gather insights

Discovery

My process with each section was based on the following Lean UX process which was to incorporate the key phases of Discovery, Research, Ideation and Implementation.

During the discovery phase we conducted workshops to map up the whole  journey from the customer first touch point to delivery of machine back to the customer.  This journey is based on a very specific high value job.

After consolidation of the journey mapping, I travelled to our Mackay workshop to conduct an in-depth validation with the team. This activity is an opportunity to align expectations and gather constructive feedback which allows me to confidently move forward.
This validated journey map was incredibly productive that resulted in the generation of a concrete workflow within the service team which inService App was build for.

Mackay Workshop Discovery

Hotjar recordings and heatmap visualisation

High Fidelity Prototypes

Based on the research and workshop insights, I worked towards addressing employees pains by coming up with potential solutions:

• Reducing the number of steps to minimise time to completion
• Auto-Complete content as much as possible
• Establishing clearer visual form hierarchy by grouping related fields
• Standardisation styling and UI to keep the portal wholesome
• Role base utilitarian tools

Prototypes went through several rounds of critique and user validation

User Validation

Due to limited resources and time constraints, we utilised assumptions and validate them through several workshops. Our main goal was to understand the process in which our service staff interact with the current application. The validation process involved task based questions so we could observe user behaviors, issues, pain points and form solutions. The results were insightful and reflected important user flows in the app and further confirmed our hypothesis. Conducting these tests earlier on during the workshops allow us to find and fix the apparent usability pain point at a lower cost.

Development Stage

After the prototypes were user validated, I worked closely with the development team to get the design up on UAT environment before beta release. As a team we worked cohesively making sure functionality and design are as per design.

Next Steps

To further assist in the larger scale roll-out, I have been presenting to the wider audience about the coming features that employees will expect. We have been successful with overwhelming positive feedbacks company wide.

Beta release is scheduled for July. I have been working with the data team to link up the app with analytics. We are looking forward to gathering more valuable insights, feedbacks, GA results and generating user centric ideas to better understand user behavior for the next UX improvement or product