IXD414 - Designing with Systems

Fearless Inventory

Let's build a system from an existing brand, and then put it to the test.

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You will design a new tool for a small coffee chain warehouse. Your solution will help a warehouse worker reconcile a putative inventory quantity with actual in-person inventory in a physical location. You'll get assigned an existing coffee brand to work with, but many specific functional details will be mandated here.

Your Client

Your client is the Operations Director for a growing chain of 30 coffeeshops. Here's her request to you:

We need help! I've got a fancy ordering system that lets my local store managers order stuff from my central warehouse - nonperishable stuff like plates, cups, aprons, brand merch, and even tea. The system keeps track of their orders, and subtracts it from the inventory count at my central warehouse. That system tells me what I should have remaining in stock at the warehouse, but that doesn't always match up with reality.

I need something audit what we really have in stock and compare that with what we think we have in stock. We've been growing like crazy lately so our warehouse is kind of a mess. (See photos: warehouse exterior, shelves, warehouse interior.)

I'm not going to ask my retail team to mess with this - I just want a system where the warehouse team can count up what we have, and then that generate some kind of report to me.

Here's my current inventory readout. I have no idea if this is accurate. Help!

Deliverables

We'll go step-by-step through specific design deliverables that get us closer to an interactive system to solve our client's problem. We'll discuss each deliverable before we start, but this will include:

• Brand Research and Design System audit
• Building a lightweight design system
• User Stories
• Wireframes
• Prototypes
• Guerrilla User Testing

Some other requirements:

• We'll be designing and testing for mobile devices. Figure out the proportions of your phone.
• We need to represent this actual inventory reference.
• We'll need to fulfil THIS set of User Stories that we define together.
• We'll be working collaboratively for a lot of this project. Get used to the idea!
• Don't get too attached to any one deliverable

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