TASK & EMPLOYEE MANAGEMENT ANDROID APP
THE PROBLEM
WHERE DID THE TIME GO? AND BILLY FOR THAT MATTER? Grocery stores are a ubiquitous American experience. Running one, or thousands of them, is a challenge of people management, supply chain, operations and much much more.
For Kroger, the country's largest grocer by revenue at over $121 billion came to our team with a very specific problem. They have thousands of hourly employees responsible for everything from stocking shelves and cleaning to ensuring the quality of produce and baking. Here's what they didn't have - an effective way to track what these employees are doing hour-to-hour, assign employees their subsequent tasks nor a way to analyze their productivity.
This lack of task management oversight meant managers couldn't easily analyze an associate's performance and therefore made it difficult to have clear oversight of his/her store. The associate, on the other hand, often didn't know what to do next once their main tasks were completed, which resulted in an exorbitant amount of lost productivity hours and, in turn, lost revenue. Here's how we helped.
ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES
I served as the lead UX designer on this three-month engagement. I had the pleasure of working and collaborating with my colleagues Hana, a senior engagement manager, and Jason, our senior most visual designer, in addition to members of the Kroger UX team and business analyst colleagues from Deloitte. My personal deliverables & contributions for this project included:
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UX research including in-person observations and dozens of interviews at Kroger supermarkets in Colorado
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Creation of light UX personas and a comprehensive user journey
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Writing of an 8-page narrative to capture the detailed responsibilities and connectivity of these personas across departments and levels
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Creation of mid- to high-fidelity wireframes (that our UI designer turned into visual compositions)
THE PROCESS
See how it's done firsthand
Get the full spectrum perspective
Tell the story from each point of view
Don't reinvent the wheel, integrate
Design a simple solution with legs
For 2 weeks, we toured dozens of stores to get a sense of how they ran and identified the largest gaps
We interviewed employees from the top of the ladder to the bottom to create our four personas
Before designing screens, I wrote a complete narrative to construct our user journeys across personas
We not only collaborated with Kroger's internal tech team but even integrated previously built tools
Kroger's scale was a challenge, so we prioritized simplicity with future iterations in mind
Capture the narrative as an 8-page movie script (excerpt below)
STORY BRIEF
Envision a future where every Kroger employee, from District Manager to Associate, knows exactly what they’re supposed to do, when, where and how. A future where decisions are proactively made based on data and not by fire. Imagine a future driven by automation and clarity.
Now think of a centralized, digital tool set that brings all this to life – a tool that optimizes efficiency by integrating data and information to ensure that the right people are doing the right tasks at the right times while helping leadership strategically make those decisions.
This tool set represents the future state of task management. Through the creation of an Android app (Kroma) that integrates with the RAD and other existing systems, all associates will spend their time more efficiently on the highest value add tasks, leading to an increased bottom line and an improved overall customer experience.
Overarching benefits of Kroma include:
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improving store visibility
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automation & on demand data-driven decision making
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optimized prioritization
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centralized systems information & visualization
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improved efficiency
SCENE 1 - Tuesday, 7:00 am
ROLES – District Manager & Store Manager
Vanessa, a district manager, pores over store performance data on her Android tablet in the parking lot of store #748. She’s particularly interested in how much time it takes associates to complete various tasks since she knows this directly correlates to labor cost savings. She is able to see this information easily with the Kroma app. She’s able to analyze the data and strategically plan her store visits, which led her to begin her day at her friend Jack’s store.
Benefits
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Overall visibility into store, division & district performance
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Data visualization & analytics
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Data analytics & visibility into task duration, progression & completion
THE DELIVERABLES
Data-driven persona creation
Personas were based on dozens of interviews with Kroger associates from those in the corporate offices to those stocking shelves in the middle of the night, which we observed firsthand. The ability to see what associates did day-to-day and hour-to-hour helped us to note gaps in their task management and how to better communicate this throughout the organization.
User Journeys tied to Personas
We created a massive user journey that spanned across personas and detailed how each user would use and benefit from the Kroma system. We included not only our Android app solution, but also virtual assistants and Kroger's existing RAD system. This was the culmination of our interviews, market research and proved our overall understanding of the problem.
Sketches > Wires > UI iterations
*NOTE: I designed the top row of initial UX wireframes while my awesome colleague, Jason, took those designs and ran with them as the Senior Visual Designer on this project.
THE RESULT
SOMETIMES YOU PAVE ANOTHER'S PATH The three month engagement was overall a success in that we delivered a fully-designed Android app that proved our knowledge of their organization and effectively addressed their needs. Our work ultimately led to an additional contract being signed for more future work by Deloitte. Kroger executives made the decision to hold off on the development of the app itself, at least in the near term, in favor of investing more heavily on their existing RAD, a handheld scanner that was cheaper to build and maintain, and other internally driven projects instead of our Android specific app. The door was left open for future collaborations and engagements.