CASE STUDIES
Inventory - Replenishment Grids
Overview
As part of the greater redesign of inventory software for Walgreens pharmacies, we were asked to design a visually dynamic way for both corporate users and store managers to setup auto replenishment logic. The auto replenishment logic would be based on proprietary formulas and allow for smarter on-demand ordering of pharmaceuticals for a pharmacy eliminating the need for less stock on hand.
Client:
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Walgreens
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Role:
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Senior UX/UI Designer
Problems
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Walgreens currently spends lots of capital on stocking pharmaceuticals for a pharmacy and would like to have a smarter process to reduce this investment and be more liquid
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Understanding the proprietary formulas that enable this type of automatic re-order are complicated and not easy to understand. A better UX/UI solution is needed so that the process is more intuitive
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Logic surrounding how we prioritize rule hierarchy needs to be established for auto-replenish parameters (adding to the interface’s complexity). Scenarios we need to account for are Global rules, State rules, District Rules, and Store Rules.
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Solutions
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Develop a grid-based interface for users to easily create auto-replenishment rules for restocking inventory items
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UI should be dynamic and allow for easy to understand decision trees by revealing content on an as-needed basis via progressive disclosure so it’s easy for user to establish a new replenishment rule
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Determine prioritization hierarchy rules based on legal and corporate requirements (so that they are pre-determined for the user and will dynamically change based on the user’s selections).
Site Map
The pharmacy inventory application is easily one of the most robust and complicated in the new pharmacy suite of of apps. This being the case, it was important to understand how your user got to the replenishment grid page and make sure that experience was quick and intuitive. This exercise also helped us to inform any updates to our navigational architecture for this release.
User Personas
Because the process of reordering inventory has been complicated in the past, it was important for us to better understand our users via user personas so that we can tailor a quicker, more intuitive experience.
User Interface Design
Many of the challenges faced by this user interaction were solved in the user interface design. Essentially we needed to bake in three different types of parameters for replenishment grid. We leveraged progressive disclosure and decision trees to drive the user toward creating grids with the correct settings.
Conclusion
This was a difficult subject to crack. This workflow did not exist in their legacy inventory software and the more we worked on it, the more requirements surfaced that were not in the original PRD. We began to have working sessions with both Product and Business to rapidly problem solve and ensure we captured all of the requirements in the interface.
This is where lightweight rapid prototypes and making on-the-fly design changes allowed us to not only understand the full scope of their needs but also design a solution that was intuitive despite the complicated subject matter.
Once we figured it out, it was very satisfying since we were actively working on a solution for some time. The resulting UIs tested well with our users and it was ultimately a success.
