UX Designer
UI Designer
Strategy
Branding
Information
Architecture
Interaction Design
Voice Design
User Personas
User Flows
Wireframes
Usability Testing
Branding
Mockups
Stakeholder Presentation
Take a look in your freezer right now. Go on, take a look. There's
a very good chance that almost everything in your freezer
was brought to you by Lineage. Lineage is the world's largest cold
storage warehousing company with hundreds of warehouses that act as
a middleman between food manufacturers and your grocery store with
the accurate slogan: We help feed the world. In 2019, I joined the
Lineage team to create one of three apps to optimize this process and
make Lineage's warehouses run more smoothly.
While I started working on the Dock and Storage app with another
designer, I was quickly assigned to take over the primary application as the
sole designer and worked on building that application for over 18
months. I worked with a team of brilliant designers, each working on
one of the other apps for Lineage, to create a collection of apps
known as LinOS. We worked very closely with the stakeholders to
create User Personas, create
User Flows, create Wireframes, write a
Voice Script, design
Branding and Logos, design Mockups, and
present our work for bi-weekly review directly to the stakeholders.
This was a tremendously complicated project as our work needed to
accommodate different warehouses' processes, different devices,
many workers who learned English as a second language, the problem
of using a device in a frozen warehouse, incorporating the ability
to go through the flows manually or with our voice assistant, the
difficulty of using a touch screen with massive gloves, and so
much more. Throughout the process, our team used
Figma, Miro, and LucidChart to bring our project
to life.
Our task was to create a suite of apps that allowed Lineage’s warehouse employees to improve their workflow, avoid errors and lost product, and increase productivity. The app I created, Dock App, specifically focused on unloading pallets off of a truck and scanning and entering in product information for each pallet on the inbound process, then scanning pallets on the dock and loading them onto a truck on the outbound process.
Our solution was to create a clean, highly efficient app called Dock App to improve our users’ workflow. We have gotten excellent feedback from our users that our app has sped up their process as well as prevented problems, like a misplaced pallet, from arising. The ability to go through a step by step flow on a device that is also capable of scanning barcodes and inputting information is both saving time and preventing human error.
On this project, I was able to work very closely with a Business Analyst who gathered requirements and wrote user stories to allow me to focus more closely on just the design process. They gathered requirements directly from the stakeholders which allowed me to build User Personas and very detailed User Flows as well as Wireframes. Finally, LinOS needed to have a voice assistant component, so we wrote a Voice Script outlining common phrases and rules for the talkback.
On this project, we were able to visit several different warehouses to take photos and notes about the way the warehouse was run. Shortly after I started on the project, I was able to visit the Lineage facility in Charleston to gather information and understand the process I would be helping to optimize. We conducted several interviews at each location we visited, taking the time to interview one supervisor and two employees with different levels of tenure at each location to get a comprehensive overview of our users.
After our team had visited the warehouse, conducted user interviews, and discovered our users’ painpoints, we were ready to create our User Personas. We created user personas for our supervisor as well as three employees with different experience levels to make sure we were accommodating all of our users in our design plan.
We processed our user interviews and found common themes that we used to create a Journey Map for each of the primary processes. We documented our users’ thoughts, feelings, opportunities and actions as the day went on. We worked as a team to add to these journey maps to ensure we were getting a comprehensive view of our users and their needs.
Each flow began with the creation of a User Flow in Lucidchart. Over the course of the project, these flows would change and expand due to the ever changing requirements from the stakeholders. While we created a User Flow for every flow in the app, each is very large and complex and so I’ve included just the User Flows for Unloading for the manual flow and voice flow in this case study.
Once our preparations were complete, we were prepared to begin our Wireframe Designs. These wireframes were created very early on in our process, and a significant amount has changed since then. They were presented directly to the stakeholders for discussion and feedback. We went through several more iterations before moving on to our full color mockups. Again, the set of wireframes created were numerous, so in this case study I have simply presented the wireframes for what became the Unloading process.
A key aspect of LinOS would be the users’ ability to utilize a voice assistant in addition to manually enter data into the device. Because of the warehouse’s freezing temperature, all employees wear large gloves that make it difficult to type or use a screen. Therefore, it was key to have the ability to enter in all necessary information without ever touching the device. The stakeholders decided on wakewords and basic rules, but the design team worked together to write Voice Documentation making sure to prioritize the user’s experience. This document includes a breakdown of talkback utterance anatomy, grammar, wakewords, and general rules for the talkback. If the voice flow is not working, the user does also have the option to continue with the flow manually.
Lineage came to us with existing colors and an existing company logo. However, they did not yet have a logo created for the suite of apps we were creating called LinOS. As a team, we worked together to create several options for the LinOS Logo and Branding. Eventually, we chose the logo that still remains today.
After our initial set of wireframes, we continued on to create full
color Mockups for the duration of the project. These mockups have had
many iterations due to new use cases, changing requirements, and
feedback from users. They will continue to evolve as Levvel’s design
team continues to work with Lineage to make the best possible
experience for our users.
During this project, I learned about how rewarding and challenging it can be to work directly with a client from the start of a project. I joined the LinOS team in the beginning of the project and there was so much discussion and so many iterations as we continued to learn new information. Lineage is the world's largest cold storage company, and I have never worked on a project that was so large and complex before. However, after working with Lineage for 18 months, I can confidently say that I am ready to handle any project in the future.