V.L
UTMS
Traceability Management System
About UTMS
UTMS is a traceability management system built with blockchain and IoT to enable traceability and authenticity of products in the supply chain. With it, businesses can track and manage the products in real-time, and consumers can easily view the product’s information including origin, logistics journey and conditions at each position by scanning the smart tags on it.
My Contribution
By the time I joined UCOT, UTMS is only a Minimum Viable Product that contains a few basic functions, my job was to test the existing product and developed a new version. My work consisted of managing project, performing user research, conducting usability testing, redefining site map and user flows, creating wireframes and prototype, and designing the user interface.
My Role
UX&UI Designer
Tools
Figma, Sketch, Invision, Adobe Photoshop, Miro
Team Size
4 people
Challenge: How could businesses track and manage the product in the supply chain efficiently and effectively?
Global logistics are hard to manage due to the lack of transparency in the supply chain. Manufacturers, Logistics and consumers need full visibility on the supply chain, so they could track the product, and make sure that they are following the pre-planned route and stored under suitable conditions.
Supply chain counterfeiting is also a big issue that plagues almost every industry. While manufacturers and distributors face huge losses every year to counterfeit products, the risks to consumers can be even greater.
STAKEHOLDER MEETING
Our project team met with our clients for a project kick-off meeting to gather information. Through the meeting, we learned that their business objectives are:
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To be able to track and manage the products all the way throughout shipment, therefore avoiding counterfeiting and theft of goods.
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To build trust with their consumers with transparent information.
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It would be better if they could monitor the storage condition in real-time.
We understand the potential target audiences would be most of the participants in the supply chain, which are:
Manufacturers
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Production & quality control
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Warehousing the Products
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Send the products to the distributors through logistics
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Maintain brand reputation
Logistics
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Ship the products from manufacturers to distributors
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Keep the products in suitable storage conditions
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Update the logistic status with manufacturers and distributors
Distributors/Retails
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Sell the products to the consumers
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Build trust with consumers
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After-sales service
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Manage Inventory
And the pain points throughout the supply chain are:
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Insufficient supply chain visibility
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Lack of consumer confidence due to Counterfeiting
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Poor storage conditions
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
We started with a competitive analysis of the key competitors. This was a quick way to compare and contrast our current platform to the others and find out what we could implement or recommend within our re-design.
EXISTING PRODUCT ANALYSIS
To evaluate the current website, we conducted 6 user testing to see how the user interacts with the current platform. The key findings on the main functions were the following:
Dashboard
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User find some titles are very confusing to understand.
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User is not sure what 'per day' and 'vs prev month' data refer to.
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User try to click on a title as they want to see the details of that title, but nothing come out.
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Some titles have different style
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User try to click on the issues to see the details, but it does not refer to any pages.
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The annotation of the distribution record is not clear, and there are two filters that are very confusing.
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The map is not working properly, no data shows when clicking on each area, and users want to filter it by date to view the data comparison within a certain period.
Traceability - Map
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There is no 'search' button to click on after inputting the content.
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The 'Node Info' window does not show the name of the node.
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The styles are not consistent throughout the window.
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Users want to see more details in the right 'node info' window, such as whether there are any issues.
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Users want to know more about the issue, such as the reporter's information, the product details, the location and other related information that help them solve the problem.
Traceability - Alarm
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There is no 'search' button to click on after inputting the content, the 'batch operation' button is confusing.
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The pagination is not in the same place ( some at the bottom left corner and some at the bottom right corner).
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The Font styles are not consistent throughout the window.
Report - Product Analysis
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‘total no. of traceability’ is not very useful when making decisions.
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The graph looks like a comparison between 2 products, but there is only one product name and details on the top.
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The graph is not working properly, and the user wants to filter it to see detailed data.
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There is no 'search' button to click on after inputting the content
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Users find some of the titles very confusing.
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The 'view' button does not look like a button.
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The graphs shown in the 'traceability data' table is overwhelming
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The pagination is not in the same place ( some at the bottom left corner and some at the bottom right corner).
PERSONAS
We developed our primary personas that were a reflection of the trends we found from the research. The persona helped us to create scenarios to ensure our user's goals were met in our redesign.
OUR SOLUTIONS
The UCOT Traceability Management System is aiming to address the problem by:
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Providing full product traceability: combined with Smart Tags and IoT devices, businesses can track and manage the products throughout the supply chain.
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Building trust with consumers: the underlying blockchain technology ensures the security and authenticity of data, therefore, building trust with consumers with transparent information.
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Ensuring the quality of products: with the help of IoT devices, businesses could monitor the storage condition, and receive Real-time notifications when abnormal occurs.
REVISED SITEMAP
DESIGN
Our team then work together to redesign the website. In this iteration, our focus was on the dashboard, Traceability and Report as they are the key features of our platform. We created wireframes and Low-Fi Prototype and ran the testing as much as we could before we release our updated version.
Dashboard
Traceability - Map
Traceability - Alarm
Report - Product Analysis
NEXT STEPS
UTMS is one of our key product, we had a multi-year roadmap of improvements, and will continuously develop a next version to create a better experience for the users. In our next version, we would:
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Conduct interviews with our potential users and to dig deeper on their gains and pains.
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Focus on the Dashborad, Product and Treaceability section, so we can help our stakeholder to track and manage the products efficiently.
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Perform usability testing of the current website before adding new features.
