Trade made simple

Cresicor's Web App
Who is Cresicor?
Cresicor empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions in the world of trade management.
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I collaborated with Customer Support, Engineering, Data Analysts, a project manager and UI Designers.

We designed a module for a Deduction Analyst to quickly convert the hundred of pages of invoices received by distributors into one customized Excel file.
What's my role?
I led the Product Design.
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I designed then maintained system components and templates that were tested with user's and handed off to engineering. I incorporated cross-functional feedback so that the final React app considered the needs of user's and the business.

The Process

Summary

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Stage 1: Understand

1-2 días

Goal Collaborate with team to gain a shared understanding of user needs
How Define business goals & metrics
Deliver User interviews & Contextual inquiry, Competitor analysis, expert interviews

Stage 2: Define

4-7 días

Goal Combine research with observing user’s problems
How Define the users needs and ways to track if the design meets those needs
Deliver User Need statement, Persona, Track with Mixpanel, Heuristic Evaluation, User Flow

Stage 3: Sketch

4-7 días

Goal Generate creative and effective solutions
How Cross-functional brainstorming
Deliver Crazy 8’s, wireframes, black and white prototype to be tested with users

Stage 4: Decide

4-7 días

Goal Team and stakeholders decide what will be prototyped in high fidelity
How Team review’s insights from usability tests and design artifacts
Deliver Clear path forward and a record of design decisions

Stage 5: Prototype

4-7 días

Goal Build real, tactile representation of our ideas
How Defining typography, color, style, and components
Deliver Figma components of UI states, templates, and a high fidelity prototype to test with users

Stage 6: Implement

4-7 días

Goal Put the vision into effect
How Clean engineer handoff and continuous testing
Deliver Usability tests, Design system, Quantitative metrics

Who are the users?
Temp Analysts from Consumer Packaged Goods companies like Oatly, Simple Mills, Euro USA, Bulletproof, and Amy's. I organized three rounds of user feedback with those five target users.
What's their Problem?
We performed contextual inquiry interviews with four target users. We learned that inexperienced and temporary workers spend weeks to organize hundreds of unique invoices for a Senior Analyst to easily review.

Merging all unique PDF invoices into one clear & concise Excel file takes the most time in that process.
A User Persona formed from our interviews that represents our target user
What's our Solution
Empower temporary workers to create organized Excel files for their Senior Analyst in seconds instead of weeks. The team formed a heuristic evaluation to decide on how we could simplify the user's journey. I then collaborated with engineers to create a three-step user flow. You can view the User Flow here.

User Flow summary
1. Select Backup Source (format)
2. Drag Files
3. Edit Cells
Prototype
First, the inexperienced worker selects the format of their files. We show a sample of each format so the worker knows which one to select. Next, they upload their files by dragging. Once uploading, one can see the progress of their files.
Design System
Each screen's template was constructed from individual components and states.
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Designers are able to use this design system to quickly create templates and prototypes. Engineers were able to convert each component in React components.
I created the Design System in Figma for straightforward and transparent engineering handoff. Expand to view.
Learnings
The world of trade management is complicated and we had less than two months to get designs off the ground. Here are some shortcuts I learned to get design out quickly:
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1. Go out and set interviews with your colleagues. They are professionals in your industry who have shared problems with users and have a vested interest in solving them.
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2. Involve these people on the team early on in the process. Set up times with Customer Support to review user interview questions and user feedback. Set up time with engineering to review the User Flow.
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3. Communicate your process clearly as you go. For this project, I created a shared Notion document with the design schedule updated with user feedback, heuristic evaluations, and design iterations. The team can now see the progress being made and offer suggestions and solutions.
Next Project →
Next Project →

Delivery app re-design

Problem
GLS, a €3.3 billion European delivery company, offers its customers the option to pick up their package from a nearby store if they are not home to sign for a package. My team designed a mobile app for store employees to scan these deliveries as they enter and leave their store.
Solution
Our app launched to 1,500 shops in Spain and is on track to reach 20,000 locations worldwide by the end of 2020. My updated user flow reduces average user taps from 19 to 6 and decrease average time to scan a package by 4x.

Traveling for Business

Problem
When I traveled to San Francisco for a business trip, I didn’t have time to see attractions as I had to focus on my work responsibilities. I felt I missed an opportunity, going to a new location for a week and not try any new experiences. My colleagues felt the same. I began brainstorming ways to explore attractions that one can squeeze into their work schedule.
Solution
I delivered an interactive prototype that allows you to sync your phone’s calendar with the schedule of attractions around you. The prototype was tested by 25 users, which influenced my published article on the importance of iterative design.

The Process

User Research
My user research began with interviewing four recent business travelers. The insight from these interviews led to the Problem Statement: People who travel for work need a way to experience attractions that fit their schedule because it can be challenging to combine work and travel.

From my interviews, I derived a user persona to guide brainstorming.
First Iteration: Paper Prototype
The iterative process began by sketching a paper prototype in the method of Crazy 8’s. In the prototype below, you can scroll through attractions, choosing the ones you’d like to visit on your trip. Once selected, the app suggests times to go that fit your schedule.

Usability Testing Takeaway
• 8 tests
• Users didn’t understand that the selection box added attractions to their calendar
• The icons, such as the filter on the top right were also ambiguous
Second Iteration: Med-fi
I replaced each selection box with two buttons. One allowed the user to sync the attraction with their calendar, and the other allowed a user to buy tickets to that attraction. I also removed the filter icon and instead showed the user the filter options right away. Lastly, I added a bottom bar to help users navigate.

Usability Testing Takeaway
• 5 tests
• Users hesitated before choosing which of the two buttons next to each attraction to click
Third Iteration: High-fi
I removed one of the buttons, the one that allows users to buy tickets, simplifying the experience to one call to action. I updated the fidelity by adding pictures and style.

Usability Testing Takeaway
• 8 tests
• The functionality of the call to action button was ambiguous to users
• Users did not understand how attractions were sorted
Fourth Iteration: Interactive Prototype
I replaced the icon on the call to action button with the text ‘Sync with Calendar’ to give the user a clear call to action. I also added a ‘Sort by’ filter so people can decide which type of attractions they’d like to see first. Lastly, I solidified the color palette, typography, and grid.
Learnings
If you view the app from the beginning, you’ll notice I stumbled upon a typical onboarding dilemma: When should an app ask the user to access their location, camera, or in my case calendar? As of iOS 13, if a user doesn’t allow the app permission, then the app is never able to ask them again. The user must go to their settings and change the permission manually. Therefore it’s essential to ask at the right time. I incorrectly ask for calendar access when the user first opens the app. The problem here is that I haven’t yet demonstrated value to the user. A better solution would be to ask for permission once the user selected their desired attraction. At this point, it’s evident that if the app could only access their calendar, they can be recommended times to go that fit their schedule. We are hesitant to give an app access to our data until the app demonstrates it’s value — then we have no problem sharing our data. Each iteration incrementally brought me closer to understanding the essential needs of a business traveler.
Next Project →
Next Project →

Improving user activation with an obvious mental model

Loop's Dashboard
What is Loop?
Loop is a productivity Dashboard that unifies the productivity tools you already use. We integrate with Google, Microsoft, Slack, Jira, and even Twitter to organize your apps based on what's important to you right now.
What's my role?
I led a team of UX/UI designers, engineers, product managers, and data scientists to improve user activation and bring delight to our users.
Business Goal
The majority of first-time users never returned to the app. The business goal was to improve user activation to 70% past their first week.
User's Problem
According to interviews and surveys, users misunderstood how the product performed. They had a misaligned mental model. A mental model is based on belief, not facts: that is, it's a model of what users know (or think they know) about a system. A misunderstood mental model leads to incorrect actions which cause frustration and eventual abandonment.

I led three rounds of rapid prototyping and usability testing to discover ways to improve the user's mental model.
Loop's Original Dashboard. In addition to many usability problems, the overload of information leads user's to feel overwhelmed as opposed to welcomed
Solution
We led three fundamental changes
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1. Visual Hierarchy
The design challenge was creating a sense of hierarchy while minimizing the time front-end engineers would need to update the designs. I accomplished this by maintaining the overall layout but differentiating items using color, font size, and indentations.
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2. Convenient Notifications
User testing pointed to the ambiguity of "what just happened" after task completion or failure. In collaboration with the product manager and a backend engineer, I created a Notification library that demonstrated which notification to present to a user at the appropriate times.
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3. Onboarding
After implementing the UI for the Dashboard, I was re-hired to create a guided onboarding tutorial. The tutorial engaged the first-time users as their data was loading, leaving them with a more precise mental model, further increasing user retention. We achieved our business goal of improving user activation to over 70% past their first week.
My team's re-designed Dashboard
Design System
Next Project →
Next Project →

User Research

To begin this project, I listened to insights gathered from the user research team. I learned that users struggled to decide which options allowed them to complete their current task. I found that GLS had competitors like FedEx and DHL, who provided their user's shortcuts to complete commons tasks like scanning an incoming delivery.

User Takeaways

My first steps

I went to the whiteboard to visualize the five most common tasks a user of our app would need to complete. The first three cases fall under Direct Logistics, from the truck to the customer. The last two cases fall under Inverse Logistics, a return from the customer to the truck.

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Direct logistics

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Inverse logistics

A New User Flow

I reviewed the five cases with the engineering team and discovered that the system could infer which task the user would need to complete based off the barcode on the package.

• Reduced the number of taps from 19 to just 6 in the most popular case (use case 1).

• The average time of each of the five tasks decreased by 4X.

Prototyping story

After understanding the pain points from the current version of the app, we sat down as a team to create a paper prototype. To generate design ideas, we collaborated on a crazy eight session where we all shared our ideas for the improved interface. We combined these ideas into a paper prototype. We then conducted usability tests before I moved onto, creating a medium-fidelity prototype. We tested this prototype with Spanish speakers who had familiarity with the existing app and with English speakers who were our target users. Finally, I created a high-fidelity prototype that went through another round of testing.

Final Prototype

The most significant improvement of our redesign was bringing the user closest to the task they need to accomplish. In our improved app, the user can scan packages immediately, and the app provides the user with feedback that their information was recorded. Below, I show use case 2, handing a package to a customer.

Use case 2: The store owner hands a package to a customer

The store owners scans the customers QR code. If it fails the store owner can enter the code manually.
Then hands the device to the customer to sign for the package

Style Tile

In consideration of consistency, we used the same colors as GLS, blue, and yellow. Blue is used to draw attention towards an action such as scanning, and yellow is for buttons that complete a step. Because yellow complements blue, it serves as a compelling call to action.

Next Steps

Roadmap for the next months

Phase 1:

  • Download a .pdf and .csv file of summarizing each transaction.

Phase 2:

  • Empower Parcel-shops to notify GLS when they are on vacation or closed.

Phase 3:

  • Translate the app to Portuguese and then other European languages so the app can expand across the continent.

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Learnings

Bring users closer to what they came for.

We learned to consistently keep the user’s needs in mind. When one begins the design process they may want to include a plethora of features. However it’s important to have the user’s most vital goals in mind and bring those solutions closest to the user.

Adapt to each users unique needs.

Even though we have a user persona for this projects is it important to keep in mind that every user is unique. Large parcel-shops have different requirements than smaller shops. Experienced user’s needs differ then that of a novice. It is important to provide flexibility in design so that everyone’s needs are included.

Communicating with Engineers to ensure designs are feasible.

Practice to have an open relationship with engineers and constantly keep them in mind aswell as the user. Make sure that the client is happy with the outcome and their goals are taken into consideration.

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Next Project →
Next Project →

Testimo

nials

Thor Jubera Albo

01
Lead Engineer at GLS

Dovid showed initiative and tremendous logical ability in rebuilding our existing UI/UX architecture, which reduced our minimum user clicks from nineteen to six. He proved to be an empathetic leader with an uncanny ability to understand the needs of the engineering team.

Maryanne pollock

Art Director at Obelisk Gallery
02

‘Remarkably efficient’ is the phrase that comes to mind when I think about Dovid. I hired Dovid to update my website and maintain my Gallery. He successfully updated my two websites and rapidly designed incredible prototypes!

Greg Fragin

CEO at Loop HQ

Dovid is a rare blend of technical expertise with business understanding.  He brings his innate curiosity and problem solving to each task, continuously probing and redefining the problem until he reaches the ideal solution.  Dovid is a pleasure to work with and the output speaks for itself.

William Plotnick

President & Co-Founder of Cinelimite Inc.

The designs Dovid crafted are top-notch, and the design system he integrated allows for straightforward fixes and bulk updates throughout every area of the app. I'm looking forward to hire him on upcoming projects. Highly recommended!

About

me

Development

After earning a computer science degree, I worked as a Software Engineer for NexHealth. There, I developed full-stack apps using JavaScript frameworks and HTML/CSS. I use my engineering experience to grasp how software is structured, so solutions are feasible.

Design

I love to travel, so I studied UX/UI Design in Barcelona. I met great friends, designers, and my first client, GLS, A European logistics company. I've since worked under contract for Cinemalite, a Brazilian cinema, Loop HQ, a productivity startup, and Cresicor, trade software.