INITIATIVE #1
How can we help users complete their purchase with confidence, and efficiently
01
Problem
Users, when purchasing for their work or on behalf of their companies, sometimes don't know what they are allowed to buy. And even if they do, they struggle to find the right product.
This is mainly due to 2 reasons:
- While this product gives users options to purchase across multiple catalogs - internal, Amazon, etc. The user has to manually search through each of them separately to find their product! (This is mainly because the customer/their employers wanted it to be so)
- Users are expected to figure out which catalog to buy from. Many of the new employees rarely know that they should purchase from company catalog first.
- Because of a poor search engine, correct results don't show up and users submit new purchase requests all the time.
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- Employees sometimes don't get enough direction from their companies about what they need to purchase
- When they arrive on the tool, most of the info is unavailable to them
- They're not sure from the current product detail page if this is the right product for them or if they are allowed to buy these.
- Most users are afraid they would get blamed for submitting a wrong purchase. They only learn about rejections after it goes to approvers.
Business need: What is the reason to solve this problem today?
Losing market share
SAP, while still leading the market with $3.2 Trillion in annual trade, is losing market share to smaller players with better UX. Buying journey is a core part of procurement experience and management wants make sure UX is improved.
Outdated technology
The current buying experience runs on an outdated stack across all verticals - Backend, front end and design language. Our current stack restricts us from moving faster and innovating. We needed to build a product from scratch to fix those inefficiencies more cost-efficiently.
MAIN STORY
As an RCE admin, I should be able to, in a clear and intuitive way, see or drill down into all of my deployments that are scheduled, in-progress, completed or failed
02
Solution
Home page
1 UI Copy to guide the user take the right step.
2 Shopping bundles for new users or low frequency users who don't know what to get.
3 Discovery based on equipments you own.
Roles and collaborations
My role: I did the information hierarchy and UI design for this page.
Other UX designers: One of my designers did the bundle creation and consumption journey
Researcher: To organize a design thinking workshop that led to this layout concept.
Content writer: Help with copy
Admin Experience Product team: to build the admin experience to support this interaction.
Data Science and Intelligence product team: to build the suggestions and recommendations.
Search
3 Visual filters - useful for industrial products when an image does not convey what it is.
4 Discover items that are compatible to the products they previously purchased
5 Users had to previously search for something on internal catalog first, then switch to different search page for 3rd party catalogs. We've aggregated and indexed products across all catalogs.
6 Hierarchy to guide user select the right type of product based on company purchase policies
7 Guiding the user in case they don't find the product or search incorrectly.
Roles and collaborations
My role: I did the architecture for search experience as well as the filter panel design.
UX designers: One of my designers did the product detail card design and card interactions. The other designer took the Services and supplier search flows.
Design system team: Help with grid layout to place cards.
Search experience team: to build the backend services
Catalog team: to enhance the catalog services to make this work.
Product detail page
I've used a floating right panel with its own vertical scrolling so that CTAs are easily accessible at all times.
8 Using buyers department code to find other buyers in the same department -> to guide the user identify the right product.
9 Customers have objectives like - buy from sustainable sources, or women-owned business etc. We use gamification to get buyers to consider these products that their employer prefers.
10 Variant selection for products to save time
Roles and collaborations
My role: I did all of the design for the product detail page.
UX designers: The other designers on my team worked on the supplier detail page and the contacting procurement/colleague flows.
Sustainability product team: Flows and interactions related to gamification.
Catalog team: to enhance the catalog services to make this work.
Shopping cart
11 Add collaborators to shopping cart - For example a team planning purchases for a marketing event or their factory.
This collaboration solution was not intended for the discovery problem shared above, but we were surprised to see users use collaboration tools for discovery!
12 Recommendations based on items in the cart, to reduce discovery time
13 Recommendations based on the buyers activity on our platform, related to items in the cart.
14 Approvals required for their purchase. Users were unsure if their purchases would get rejected or why. Here approvals related to items in cart are pulled up.
Roles and collaborations
My role: I did all of the design on this page.
Chat product team: To integrate chat experience on our shopping cart
Data science and intelligence team: For item recommendations and cost saving suggestions.
Approvals product team: For approval recommendations and purchase policy details.
Order details
I wanted to make sure discovery does not end at checkout, but only when the user actually receives exactly what he expected to purchase.
15 Guiding the user through the post submission flow, with appropriate available next steps and copy at each stage of their journey.
Roles and collaborations
My role: I did all of the design on this page.
Content writer: Help write the appropriate copy for various stages of the journey
Researcher: To investigate how the status messages might change depending on what material you are purchasing.
Design system team: To build UI patterns like the approval flow
Downstream experience team: To integrate order tracking and status updates
