FBA MANAGE YOUR SHIPMENTS
Amazon FBA Sellers rely on Shipping Queue, a highly complex shipment Workflow to prep and ship inventory into Amazon Fulfillment Centers. I re-envisioned and proposed new designs for Shipment Management for FBA Sellers.
MY ROLE
I led the design of the "Manage your Shipments" between November 2015 - January 2016.
I worked with a Product Manager to test new concepts with end users.
IMPACT
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Optimizing the inbound experience means less defects in our Amazon FC's as Sellers proactively took action to reconcile shipment defects and have visibility into their shipping status of their inventory. This ultimately improves their seller performance with Amazon.
THE CHALLENGE
FEATURE DISCOVERY
Our current Shipping Queue had become increasingly complex that any new features become challenging to discover. It has become important for Seller to take actions on pending issues regarding their shipments. We needed to steer away from adding features to shipping queue and start thinking about a Shipping Portal.
An audit of existing flows enabled me to identify key areas for improvement.
THE VISION
'Manage your Shipments' Portal
I wanted a centralized locations for Sellers to Manage shipment-related workflows. A single page or workflow was not enough. I have to think about a high level overview of Inbound activity, as well as the ability to drill down to shipment-level as well as box-level information.
shipment status
Shipment progress and status is a complicated matter. I explored how we can aid users in understanding the status of their shipments.
How I Got There
stitching pieces together
A full audit of current features was necessary to understand what the current experience is and what was lacking. The challenge here is working with siloed teams and an existing seller base that were trained over time in using our legacy tools, but also for their pressing needs for more accurate data, regardless of look and feel. We got the pulse from sellers that lack of trust in tool improvement may have run deeper than we initially thought - We wanted to ensure that we're enhancing more than the look and feel of the UI, but that we're delivering value to sellers that they've been asking for.
WHAT I LEARNED
THE THREE DIMENSIONAL PROBLEM
Working in the Seller Space meant that every UX Challenge had 3 underlying dimensions: an Operational Process improvement challenge, A physical vs Virtual status challenge, and an information display or UI Challenge. This is quite a complex and yet fascinating space to work. On top of that, dealing with legacy tools where separate programs add features in silos and an evolving user base meant having to tackle complexity to arrive at an optimum UI solution. The risk is that there are many obstacles to making intuitive design changes that would benefit the Seller Base in very significant ways.