Introduction:
A beer garden is a popular outdoor space for people to gather and enjoy a variety of beers. The project was to transform managing inventory that was being done manually on a spreadsheet to an easy-to-understand app for a mobile device. The inventory was being tracked on multiple spreadsheets, making it difficult to get an accurate picture of what was in stock, and what was running low. As a result, they were losing sales due to stockouts and were also overstocking certain items, leading to waste and increased costs.
Challenge:
Create an inventory management app that would make it easy for the beer garden staff to track their inventory in real-time.
The app needed to be easy to use, and provide accurate and up-to-date information about what's in stock, what needs to be reordered, and what's running low.
Findings:
Conducting research with users who had previous inventory experience, helped point out large flaws in most systems.
Based on those findings I was able to develop user personas to empathize with what users at the beer garden might experience on a day-to-day basis
With those personas in mind, conducting a competitive audit was crucial to see what types of inventory apps were already on the market and what aspects could be improved
Next Steps:
With those findings in mind, it was time to start sketching out ideas, using the crazy 8's method. Then picking favorite aspects of each design to include in the low-fidelity prototype
Testing:
After testing the low-fidelity prototype and discovering opportunities to improve the design. It was time to organize the findings, through Jam Board. Categorized by tasks that users found easy, completed but with challenges and tasks confusions or not completed.
Mock-ups & Prototyping:
With the feedback organized and opportunities prioritized and addressed, it was time to move on to mock-ups and high-fidelity prototypes
In Conclusion:
With these improvements to the app, owners will be able to know what is on order, how much is on-site, track usage and waste of certain products as well as the ability to communicate with employees through the app, and even post daily reminders
