Numerex iManage is a SaaS Big Data & Predictive Analytics Solution. It allows manufacturing companies to increase visibility in its supply chain by identifying optimal product deployment and leverages that information to provide advanced data analytics.
It manages machine-to machine (M2M) including tracking devices with location reporting by wireless network connectivity (IoT), and a cloud-based application.
NUMEREX - iManage
Industry-leading manufacturing companies engage multiple suppliers to regularly ship containers to various locations. In order to keep the supply chain working smoothly and without delays, Numerex iManage places tracking devices on shipping containers to collect data from their locations and generate reports for managers. At the same time, the customer has access to tools that support long-life device management, a flexible system configuration to match their enterprise business rules, metrics, and management. Battery life is also managed efficiently based on individual device load.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
If the supply chain is delayed, finished product shipments will be affected, causing significant operational and production costs, thus reducing margins and revenue.
iManage allows companies to better allocate resources, increase production efficiency and prevents unnecessary acquisition of inventory, carrying costs, and expediting expenses.
THE GOAL
Numerex tasked my team with designing and developing new features which would allow the cloud-based application to generate real time-reports, alerts, notifications, customized views, and advanced data analytics dashboards that helped managers perform daily tasks better.
OUR TEAM
1 Client Stakeholder, 1 Product Owner, 1 UI-UX Designer (Myself), 4 Developers.
MY ROLE
THE CHALLENGE
The Numerex application grew over time, adding new features and sections of the sitemap. This organic growth was understandable for employees who had been working with the product for several years, but it created a complex learning curve for new employees.
With the new required features, the current architecture of the application could no longer scale up without compromising the user performance. Working with Numerex presented me with a very complex challenge: understanding the information architecture and how single pieces of data relate to each other within different levels of the sitemap. By researching various possibilities, my team and I articulated a solution that restructured the whole app's navigation.
THE PROCESS
The Project Manager, our Client Stakeholder ,and I had various meetings to define the business goal as well as success indicators, groom the backlog, prioritize tasks, and define the roadmap.
RESEARCH - USER PERSONAS
The Client Stakeholder gathered feedback to help me identify the user personas (Manager and Supervisor) and together we mapped out the most common user journeys and their top pain points. Our team had to understand the different combinations of reports that managers would export to later provide custom modifications for each company.
Our biggest goal was to be able to provide clear-cut data analytics, presented in an easy-to-understand data visualization that highlights alerts, and important messages.
Simplifying this would facilitate the reduction of costs and overall time spent generating and exporting reports.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
SITEMAP REDESIGN
To understand what would be the most comfortable taxonomy for current users, and the one that would have the most logic for new employees, I performed a sitemap and architecture study which differentiated several levels:
WIREFRAMES
Designing the application wireframes in black and white while using UI templates, allowed me to iterate and quickly validate that the most important pieces of information were present. This process started relevant conversations considering the feedback of the developers, the client stakeholder, and the customer needs. As a result of the wireframe, a prototype was created to understand the navigation and functionality of each element.
All Wireframes were designed with four breakpoints in mind: TV for corporate presentations, Desktop for Managers, and Tablet and Mobile for Employees in the field.
INTERACTION DESIGN
Once the new architecture was defined (UX), I created a detailed documentation to explain the new user journeys. Adding specific comments to each user interface elements (UI) this documentation describes each element’s interaction (IxD). This document was the end result of several conversations and iterations with the development team over Slack and InVision.
INTERFACE
The user interface was built based on Atomic Design. This helped our team work faster and in a more organized fashion when fixing and recreating new designs.
DESIGN SYSTEM
As Numerex is an established company, they already have some branding principles. Despite the fact that these guidelines were not documented officially, part of my job was to collect this information and document the Design System. My job required me to:
NEW NAVIGATION
WITH 6 NEW PAGES
ALERTS AND WARNINGS
3X FASTER WAY OF DIVING DATA
REAL-TIME DATA VISUALIZATION
DASHBOARD
3 NEW DEVICES
NEXT STEPS - MEASURE MORE
During this entire process, the Numerex team did not have an analytics solution that allowed my team to measure and compare the impact of our work.
Things I would track in the future:
Special thanks to Gabriel Fagundez, BJ Allen, and our team of Engineers and Developers, for all their support, feedback and trust.
🧡 THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME
