Dematic approached Mutually Human looking for insight into how to best display information on the picking, storage, buffering, and shipping of products within the plants where they have their software and logistics systems installed. Specifically they wanted ways to improve the usability, efficiency of information, and quantity of actionable data displayed within their existing system.

The project began with an orientation workshop to gather information and immerse ourselves in the nomenclature and complex systems we would find during our visit to a sorting and shipping facility. We got various engineers from the client organization who had been involved in the design and latest retrofit of the largest logistics center in the Midwest into a room with us and asked them to build a model of the systems with Lego. Once we’d broken through the ice and had sorted the legos into like sizes and colors, the engineers were off and running. They build an excellent model and walked us through the flow of product through the logistics system.

The exercise turned out to be incredibly useful. Once we went to the Dematic customer site to perform stakeholder interviews, user interviews, and contextual inquiry, we found a sorting and shipping facility tens of thousands of square feet large and several stories tall, filled with hundreds of employees working in highly dependent systems with an amalgam of robots, automated and human decision-making. Had we not engaged in the former exercise, the visit to the sorting and shipping facility might have been wasted due to it’s overwhelming complexity.

Upon returning from the facility, I was tasked with creating wireframes and a first draft of visual design that Dematic could sell to stakeholders to then implement and replace their current version of planning and shipping software. I took the disparate details we had gathered and synthesized them into key design insights and finally into corresponding wireframes and design mockups. Dematic then used those designs to sell the project back to their client.

Wireframes and visual design mockups available on request.

Responsibilities

Contextual Inquiry, User Interviews, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Visual Design