Appliance Pick Pack System Overview
Asurion is a global technology solutions company known for their technology insurance and support. Recently, Asurion started to offer in-home appliance repairs as part of their services. In order to complete the repairs, Asurion Experts (technicians) are required to pick up parts to bring to customers’ homes. To accomplish this, Experts go to their nearest Forward Stocking Locations (FSLs) to pick up ordered parts and transport them to various job sites. FSL operators receive the shipments of parts, scan them into inventory, and then organize them into ready-to-go boxes so it is a quick and smooth transition when the Expert arrives to retrieve the order.
Challenge
My challenge was to design an efficient and organized pick pack system for appliance parts to be used in FSLs. Two important parameters established in our meetings were to keep the new design similar to an existing cell phone packing tool while also updating the UI to Asurion’s new design patterns. The predecessor pick pack system for appliance parts was very manual, paper driven, and prone to human error, however created ample opportunity for improvement.
Solution
After numerous meetings and iterations, we designed a simple and intuitive system for FSL operators to easily locate, scan, pack, and organize appliance parts. With the new system, the FSLs could accept returned parts, place them back into inventory, and eventually pack them again for future service jobs.
Role
UX/UI Designer
Tools Used
Figma, Notion, Zoom, Teams
Duration
August – December 2021
Design process
1 Define
- Understand the problem
- Ask questions
- Gather more information
2 Discovery
- Define the strategy
- UX research
- User interviews
- Meet with stakeholders
3 Design
- Task flows
- User flows
- Information architecture
- Wireframing
- UI design
- Gather feedback and iterate
4 Refine
- Prototyping
- User testing
- Iterations
DEFINE
What is the problem we are solving?
We kicked off the design process meeting with stakeholders to ask relevant questions in order to better understand the goals of this project. As a new designer on the team, I had to learn all the acronyms and verbiage so naturally I had a lot of questions about what everything meant. We engaged in numerous meetings to define what the process would be for this new pick pack system as there were many issues with the current process.
Prior to the design change, the FSL operators had a system where they were using excel sheets and physically writing the last 4 digits of the tracking numbers on the boxes. Then, they organized the boxes on shelves based on the last digit (See image below). Safe to say, this was not the most organized system! Appliances have many different types of parts with varying sizes. Often parts and shipments were lost as the system did not provide a meaningful way to track everything.
The challenge for me was to utilize an existing older system created for cell phone packing (a different service that Asurion offers) and create a pick pack system for appliances. I also needed to update the UI to the current AsurionUI design patterns. However, one of the asks was to keep it similar to the old system and to keep in mind the FSL operators are looking at this in a sometimes dark warehouse environment. The reason for keeping it similar to the old system was that FSL operators in different cities could be handling cell phone shipments and appliance shipments so switching back and forth with the systems can be an easy transition throughout the day.
Discovery
How might we improve the FSL pick pack process in the physical and digital space?
Concurrently, I attempted to understand (1) the process of how the shipments came into the FSL, what the FSL operators were doing, and what would be the ideal process, and (2) how the users were currently using the existing cell phone pick pack system.
I set up time to talk to the FSL senior manager who was in charge of all the FSLs across the country so he could demo how the manager view of the cell phone system work. I was also able to ask about pain points, wants, and needs for the new system. He gave me specifics of the information that needed to be displayed on the screen.
I also met with an FSL operator where he demoed how he scanned each item and utilized the system. I asked him questions of what he liked and didn’t like about the process.
Overall, he liked how simple the process was and how it told him everything he needed to know which left little room for error.
Although the feedback was useful, it related to the the cell phone packing process which was significantly different from the appliance process, so we still had a lot to discuss and many decisions to make.
Design
What is the best way to display simple instructions for the users to complete each task?
I wanted to gather my notes, and put together different flows to share with the team so that we could talk about exactly how the process would work.
I presented my ideas through task flows and user flows.
Through displaying the flows, we were able to come up with how each task would be completed and how the user would be able to get there.
We worked through many iterations of how the barcode scanning process could work. I shared designs during my design reviews and received feedback from other product designers and design managers.
My team and I continuously met to discuss the designs. I came into each meeting with more to share and questions to ask. Through our meetings and discussions we finally designed a process that now needed to be tested with FSL operators.
Final screens before testing
REFINE
Testing our prototype
I created a complete high-fidelity prototype, shared with stakeholders, and set up user testing.
User testing
- We were able to test with several users including an FSL operator and FSL manager.
- This process was completely new to them, as they were still doing the tracking number system. I created a research plan and shared it with the UX research team for feedback.
- We asked the users to complete 4 tasks
- Start a job and scan 5 shipments
- Scan 2 parts that were returned by the experts
- Restage 2 shipments – one without a WSN and one with an existing WSN
- Restage 1 shipment that has a missing part
Overall the feedback was very positive – the users were very excited about this new process.
They said:
“It’s really straightforward and I don’t think I’m going to have any type of difficulty, you know following this or anyone else would.”
“This would definitely improve [quality of life]. This would allow me to have more control of the inventory and make sure that everything is processed…the way it should be”
“This is going to be nice.”
“This is just amazing. That’s all I have to say. This is something that we really, really need.”
- The new process and terminology will need to be trained on since they aren’t used to this system.
- They were able to complete every task successfully.
- We observed if they noticed some small differences with instructions, and asked them if they saw the change, which one of them didn’t. After this observation, and after meeting with the UX content team, I decided to change this screen so that it’s more of a clear sentence of what they need to do.
Overall the feedback was very optimistic as this system helps the FSL operators organize and track their parts & shipments efficiently, reducing time needed to locate items and/or the likelihood of losing parts. I am planning to go to the Los Angeles FSL as soon as they are using it to see how it’s going and gather feedback!