Flexport Product Library Redesign • Jan - June 2020
What is a product library?
The Product Library is a tool that stores product attributes, compliance information and documents required for customs clearance. Its intention is to be connected to other systems that can reference the information when needed, and apply it automatically without requiring manual transferring data.
Why are they important?
Product libraries sit within the perfect intersections of Operations, Business and Customer value. They store information for repeat use reducing Cost to Serve for both Customers and Operations as data is only entered once. They increase growth for Customers by recommended cheaper alternative supply chain configurations or duty mitigation strategies. The increase growth for the Business by offering Customers unmatched insights into their duty spend. They increase On Time Performance by being proactive and flagging required information before it’s too late.
How was i involved?
Throughout my involvement with the product library, I’ve been to sole designer on the supporting all efforts, large and small. Starting in January 2020 with an extensive research study and audit, through present day with 17 product and feature releases.
There are 3 core groups of product library users
Direct users are those who interact with the product library directly, indirect are the consumers of product libraries and the data they store.
What was the existing product library experience?
The current experience largely comprised of a list view, and a detail view. The list interface struggled to scale with the customers needs as they often have +5,000 products. The details section was focused mostly on freight related information and less on the product and compliance information, creating a disjointed hierarchy and unclear use-case. The lack of information storage and accessibility, led to customers and operators using external tools, disconnected from the system. This forced users to copy/paste information that should've been auto-populated increasing Cost to Serve(CtS) and increase risk of data quality issues.
What interaction and IA options were explored?
Various layouts were explored to ensure we could continue to add product data without needing to redesign the interface again. This meant a more traditional list view was necessary with enhanced filtering and searching. It also deemed rendering the product information in a panel type layout, not successful.
Validation with customers and operators
Using card sorting exercises to organize the information with 6 customers and operations, the information hierarchy had been determined. We also used this time to discover additional requirements for the product library, including the additional of the Product History; a timeline of changes to the data including who made the change, when and why. This ensures a paper trail in the event of a audit by Customs and Border Protection(CBP).
What did the interface become?
The new layout and experience focused on scalability of information and a hierarchy that aligned with customer and operator mental models. This project was a foundational project for many to come, including adding more attributes, tackling challenges with adding data to the library, and creating a task workspace to further structure and validate the information while it was collected.
My role
I was the sole product designer on this project from start to finish.