Redesigning Strategic Sourcing Workspace

Initial Delivery

3 months

Role

UX Designer in the team of 1 Product Manager, 15 Engineers, 2 UX Designers, 1 UX Researcher

Impact

Reduced 20+ page transition, 40+ clickstreams for the feature that can cover 80% of app use cases • Increased user ratings on simplicity, learnability, and insightfulness • Shared with the broader product team for future feature roadmap

Strategic Sourcing Workspace Thumbnail

Background

Completing the Cycle for Sourcing

Strategic sourcing project is a fundamental cyclic process for sourcing managers, from identifying the current category spend, analyzing the market, strategizing the plan, running sourcing events, and benchmarking for the next cycle. I was tasked to redesign SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing project object, which is a workspace that users can collaborate with internal stakeholders via task and document managing functionalities.

Strategic Sourcing project background with the persona and steps for the project

Kick Off

Scope Based on Priority

After the project started, I immediately realized the pretty-overwhelming flexibility of sourcing projects and their data. I first created the current interaction map by following some of the real user templates, the best practices, and previous design thinking workshop results, to understand each and every functionality in the project. After that, I discussed with product managers to scope out the first design phase by their priorities.

The Interaction map for Strategic Sourcing project

Research

Understand the Key Use Cases and Problems

We conducted a multi-methodology research effort to better understand the user's core goals and needs. For each research method, we set the specific research questions that we want to get answers from. I organized meaningful findings in a spreadsheet based on features and consolidated the analysis with recommendations, UX values, and UX priority ratings.

4 research methods I used for the projects, Heuristic evaluation, comparative analysis, user interviews, and card sorting

Define

Multi-Persona User Flows

From the research, we defined three personas and the flows that could be the most impactful. Along with the task flows, I identified and refined 5 more specific user flows based on the workflow (which objects are used) and ownership (who creates/performs the task).

User flows for 3 personas

UX Values

Set Measurable Goals

While we analyzed the findings, we tried mapping out the findings with the general UX goals and measurable metrics. The 3 values that got the most number of votes are set as the main UX values of the project: Simplicity, learnability, and Insightfulness. This helped us to have clear goals and generate the solution that meets the values.

3 UX Goals for the project, Simplicity, Ease of learning, and Insightfulness

Design Highlight 1

Easy Task Assignment

Sourcing manager John creates a new sourcing project. He can immediately check the overall templated tasks and start to assign the tasks for the team.

As Is and To Be for the tasks table design, and other table design explorations

Design Highlight 2

Dynamic View Configuration of Tasks

Supplier manager Jane is a part of the project team and needs to closely collaborate with sourcing managers. She checks the Kanban view with filters where she can see what are the immediate tasks and their dues.

Interactive mocks for tasks view from table to card view

Design Highlight 3

Contextual Project Widgets

John checks the progress of the project and see if there are any outstanding tasks or documents he needs to take care of. The widget content is contextual based on the project stages so it can be helpful for his weekly reporting and also future benchmarking.

Interactive mocks for project widget cards with carousel

Outcome

Completing Design Cycle in Pandemic

We got overall positive feedback from 16+ usability testings with sourcing managers and sourcing specialists. This project has been commented as 'an exemplary project' that completes the full design cycle within a broader product design team. • I could also collaborate with the SAP Design team to share the use cases to make alignment with Fiori 3 components for consistency. We delivered 2 versions of mockups (short-term and long-term) that can align with the design system. • Personally, I worked remotely for 90% of the project due to the pandemic, and this was a great opportunity to learn how to effectively collaborate with the team. (Thankfully, we were able to work on Figma and that immensely helped to feel the presence) Visualizing, and preparing visual aid for meetings helped me the most.