Bluon 2.0 | Brian Prouty

Project Overview

Overview

Bluon 2.0 began a redesign of its B2B marketplace and ended with an application redesign with the vision of becoming the biggest tech to supplier network to fulfill orders based on the technician's needs.

The goal of this particular project was to identify any usability issues with the beta release of their marketplace and determine the critical roadblocks to prioritize for the next iteration of the product.

My role

Product Designer / Owner
Process improvements, User Research, Interaction, Visual Design, Prototyping & Testing, and Handoff

Background

Before Bluon hired me as a UX UI Designer, a beta release of the marketplace had been implemented. This beta version was created without any usability testing and had little consideration for the user's workflow and understanding of how the unique marketplace would work.

To understand the issues with the beta, I had to first understand how most field technicians are currently ordering products from their local suppliers.

90% of ordering behaviors can be encapsulated in these steps:

Finding the correct part
Calling the local supplier
Local supplier checks stock of part
If available, local supplier gives the technician a quote for pricing
If technician approves pricing, they have the item put on "will call"
Technician travels to supplier to pick up part
Technician charges the contractor's (company) account
Technician goes back to job site to repair the system with correct part

The process

The design to development process for this project was atypical to say the least. With the ever-changing priorities within the business we had to develop a design process that would accommodate our specific needs as a company.

I worked together with stakeholders, project managers, business analysts and developers to help develop the process that would best suit our needs as well as give us the versatilely needed to get the product across the finish line.

The steps can be broken down as such:

Getting on the same page
User research and establish timeframes
Low fidelity designs
Initial stakeholder feedback
Usability testing / feedback sessions
Iteration and structure review
Design refinement
Design to Development handoff

Understanding through research

I conducted research interviews with our primary users (HVAC field technicians) to uncover any pain points that they were experiencing with the beta release.

Based on user research we found these key issues:

Users could not find where they could send items to check availability
Of users who did find ordering, only 24% created a cart
91% of technicians would search the model first then navigate to the part needed after diagnosis.
There was lack of clarity on what was happening once the user did send an order

Solutions

Based on the above problems identified, I worked towards addressing these pains by coming up with these solutions:

Make checking availability much more intuitive
Adjust the interface to make "adding to a cart" a main action
Integrate the ordering / building cart process into the model and part search process
Once an order was sent, be sure to have a place where the user can check back on their order
Reduce the number of steps to expedite time of completion.