Democratising same day delivery for direct-to-consumer brands.
Digital Product + Experience Design View live website
Introduction
Ohi is a US-based warehousing and delivery service allowing small businesses to offer speedy, sustainable delivery options for customers. Smaller brands struggle to compete with Amazon, so the same-day delivery option at checkout gives them a competitive advantage by boosting conversion rate.
Brands reduce costs further with Ohi’s flexible micro-warehousing network, eliminating the costs of long-term leases and air transport. Ohi’s technology platform provides real-time inventory visibility and order routing so brands can forward position stock closest to urban demand.
Objective
I set out to transform the company’s product experience to meet the needs of smaller, dynamic brands. User-centricity was at heart of this transformation, helping to continuously push innovation and connect customers with the same-day experience.
The product suite provided same-day delivery capabilities and end-to-end inventory management, driving checkout conversions and helping brands manage inventory on an operational dashboard.
Feedback Management: Prioritising features around customer insight
Establishing a customer feedback loop was essential in identifying problems and uncovering opportunities in creating, marketing and delivering value. With changing market conditions, it was critical that the company retrieve customer insights to inform decision making during product development. Through analysis, transport, product tracking expectations, and quality discrepancy were identified as important factors to customers.
A single channel system was designed to collect feedback from customers during early research stages. Customers shared feedback directly with the team using interactive forms through an integration on Slack, including interviews and feedback sessions, along with satisfaction surveys on mobile devices. The system allowed the company to reach more customers, who could submit feedback on features and quality, and inquire about the product with the sales team.
Experience Design
My differentiation strategy centred on ease of use, product visibility and feedback management to help the company achieve its vision. The product tracking interface was designed as a research tool, and elevated customer product experience as part of a direct-to-consumer approach.
Using an experience design framework to implement new ideas, the business was able to find the best solutions with design experimentation. The framework consisted of multiple modules based on a “explore, design, optimise” process.
Product Prototyping: Proof of Concept
Initial ideas for the product were translated into a functional prototype with components, icons and interactions. My goal was to articulate the founders vision of how the product would function, showcasing the prototype to investors.
I focused on highlighting the operations of inventory management within a single location, while tying order flow to the wider ecosystem through the interactive map.
Product Order Tracking
As part of the direct-to-consumer approach, an order tracking app enabled customers to track orders immediately after checkout. The tracking page showed three data points; order timing, location and personalised customer details, with emphasis on the same-day delivery proposition. As part of a value-add, brand partners could customise the interface design, adding their brand colours and logo to connect with their own customers.
After checkout, a link containing the app would be sent to customers cell phones, customers could click on the link which would bring them directly to the page. The screen acted as a research tool, encouraging customers to leave feedback on satisfaction and usability. Through this research, we identified that user personalisation, real-time tracking and visibility of the same-day information was most important to customers.
Operational Dashboard: Inventory visibility and order routing
The company’s platform set out to provide real-time inventory and order routing so merchants could forward stock closet to urban demand. Same-day deliveries were handled by local partners, gig workers would do the picking, packing and shipping. Core features of the product included inventory prediction and optimisation, including continuously monitoring and rebalancing stock and SKU levels.
The ultimate goal was to clearly visualise order flow. The user experience was designed to simplify order management and utilities, providing just enough detail to pull users deeper into the experience.
Design System: Standardising the design process
With the nature of dynamic product development, the team recognised that increasing UI consistency needed to be solved through new workflows. Initially static assets were recorded in an offline product style guide, however as production quickened, building and maintaining this asset became inefficient and unfit for purpose.
Organising assets with an inventory audit, the product style guide was translated into a localised pattern library. Over the course of 3 months, this was migrated to a cloud-based, interactive design system. Segments were added incrementally, which revolved around adding, subtracting and modifying information based on ongoing design and development requirements.
Starting small with a localised library, new releases were added onto the system until the library was at a condition to take online. The process consisted of three phases “inventory audit, pattern library, system design”, helping to build a dynamic workflow that unified teams, bridged informational gaps and streamlined operations.
