Zone Picking
Mobile App (phase 1)For this project, I worked closely with the design director, business analysts, and developers
Users
Warehouse employees in charge of picking
Warehouse employees pick pallets, cases, and/or kegs from different zones/aisles, and bring those to a central desk. Employees move around the warehouse in a forklift, with a list of the items they need to pick up.
The need
Track the picking work more efficiently
A piece of paper and/or old devices weren’t enough to easily keep track of the overall logistic:
items being picked from their location
which central desk/zone to bring the items to
printing the labels
data to be in sync with the warehouse's main system
The solution
Research and wireframes
For this project, there was some initial research made with employees and warehouse managers. Business analysts already had these put together and they also knew how the picking process was taking place in the warehouse.
I took all this information and put together some wireframes to help start conversations around the potential solution.
The solution
High-fidelity mockups
After having conversations with the different teams, testing concepts with users, and iterating, we’ve come up with the final visuals (portrait and landscape) for the app.
We learned that users find it very easy to just have a few buttons and items with their locations. They also appreciated having shown on the screen how many stops they needed to do to complete their picking.
Solution - Phase 2
Voice commands
We also learned that since the users are driving forklifts while using a phone (even if it’s with minimal user interaction - clicking just a few buttons), it just wasn’t enough.
We then went ahead and had a conversation about how could we implement a voice command feature.
This would be implemented as phase 2 of the project because of all the effort NPL requires. We explore the idea of building the command software ourselves. Users would have to train their devices to remember their voice, tone, etc.