Overview
Duration
My Role
Team
Outcome
Apr 2023 - Aug 2023
Lead UX Designer
- Design (I had 2 UX Designers reporting to me),
- Engineering
- Client - Stakeholders & SMEs
A single application to record inventory and meal production-related activities efficiently, effectively, and digitally, while ensuring all necessary records are maintained
Design Problem
New York City's School field staff experience excessive administrative burden when carrying out essential recordkeeping by means of paper-based processes. The City's Dept. of Education (NYC DOE) has embarked on an initiative – the BACK OF HOUSE (BOH) Project - to digitize and automate many of the manual, paper-intensive processes now employed by the school cafeteria staff in their operations.
Key Objectives
-
School-based kitchen staff to record inventory and meal production-related activities efficiently, effectively, and digitally, while ensuring all necessary records are maintained.
-
Digitize the school kitchen's inventory record management processes to capture timely, accurate school-level inventory information.
-
Digitize school kitchen's production record management processes to capture all information related to the preparation and service of meals in schools.
-
To improve management of school Inventory and Production processes, make records centrally accessible.
Process
User Research
& Interviews
Defining User Personas & User Journeys
Key Problem
Findings
Design
Synthesis - Wireframes
High-Fidelity Designs
User Testing
Sessions
Further
Iterations
Handoff for
Developme
User Research & Contextual Inquiry
To better understand the school BOH processes, I led 7 Contextual Interviews of our our Primary Users - the School Food Managers, Cooks & District Supervisor to understand their journey, goals and frustrations.
.png)
.png)
.png)
Key Areas covered:
-
A walkthrough of filling different forms/documents you use for managing inventory & production?
-
Comfort level with computers, phones etc./tech-saviness?
-
Most important items by user role and process stage?
-
What problems do you run into? / is there anything that gets difficult/tricky/annoying?
-
What external resources do you refer?
1
Understanding the Production Record Process and Lifecycle
2
Understanding the Inventory Process and Lifecycle
Defining User Personas & User Jouneys
Based on the interview sessions of our 3 primary users - School Food Managers, Cooks & District Supervisors , we defined their personas to guide our solution.
Key Problems Identified
BOH Processes
Duration: Sept 2017 - Dec 2017
Production Record
Inventory
Reporting
- 1. Shared Records for all users and processes: Physical record books shared with cooks, district supervisors, and other staff do not support decentralized work.
- 2. Production Planning: Scan through production record book every-time to planning status of each form.
- Can’t see at-a-glance what Production Records are completed or pending for the 3-week cycle
- Inability to accurately track planning.
Share the same production handbook with cook even-though an SFM doesn’t need the production sections during planning
- 3. Shared Records for all users and processes: Physical counts, inventory reconciliation, and adjustments all in one handbook.
- 4. Manual Inventory Reconciliation: - - Manually reconcile inventory count mismatches, which are frequent, especially for countable items.
-Before doing reconciliation, need to cross-verify that all paper records since previous reconciliation cycle are complete and accurate.
- 5. Multiple school visits: Physically visit the school’s location everytime to check any records.
- 6. Physical paper searches: Physically search for old records (EDRs, Daily Req. forms etc.) for analysing transaction details of items.
Design Synthesis
I began designing initial wireframes keeping based on the paper forms shared by NYC DOE to address the following
- Create a basic information architecture and outline of the application.
- Identify possible screens and scope of work.
Initial wireframes - experimenting with layout and structure
Design Decisions:
- Top horizontal navigation was more suitable due to only 3 modules.
- Since Production and Inventory are separate modules, separate home pages for each.
- A cleaner and minimalist application homepage.
- New forms are mostly system generated and also purpose driven, hence a button instead of multiple large buttons was more suitable option.
Final Approved Design
Based on the decisions from the above wireframes, I created high fidelity designs, and the Phase 1 PDC Review was released in February 2022.
Production Planning
The Production Planning page gives the SF manager an overarching monthly view of their planning schedule and statuses
Pain Points Addressed:
-
Scan through production record book every-time to planning status of each form.
-
Can’t see at-a-glance what Production Records are completed or pending for the 3-week cycle.
-
Inability to accurately track planning.
-
Share the same production handbook with cook even-though an SFM doesn’t need the production sections during planning
Production Record Filling
The Production Record page gives the cook and School Food Manager (SFM) a separate view of the production forms where they see all their see columns specific to their work requirements.
Pain Point Addressed:
Different users share the same production handbook (an SFM doesn’t need the production sections during planning phase).
Inventory Management
The Inventory Summary section provides user with real-time counts of every item updated after each transaction.
Pain Point Addressed:
Daily manual tracking of item counts: Staff relies on inventory handbook to manually calculate updated counts.
Inventory Reconciliation
- The Inventory Reconciliation form reminds the user of incomplete forms beforehand.
- Mismatches are automatically identified from transactions.
- Historical transactions can be checked for each item.
Pain Point Addressed:
Shared Records for all users and processes: Physical counts, inventory reconciliation, and adjustments all in one handbook.
Manual Inventory Reconciliation: Manually reconcile inventory count mismatches, which are frequent, especially for countable items.
Before doing reconciliation, need to cross-verify that all paper records since previous reconciliation cycle are complete and accurate.
Reports
The Reports section maintains a list of all historical forms created.
Pain Point Addressed:
Multiple school visits: Physically visit the school’s location everytime to check any records.
Physical paper searches: Physically search for old records (EDRs, Daily Req. forms etc.) for analysing transaction details of items.
User Testing Sessions
Being a completely new product designed from scratch, user feedback from was integral with 3 main goals of the BOH prototype review sessions -
-
Finalize Visualization – Show stakeholders how the final product would look and function finally passing the designs to development teams for the implementation.
-
Obtain Feedback – To identify and solve end user pain points during usability testing thereby enhancing user experience.
-
To validate the underlying requirements as defined by the BRD and FRD which drove the designs.
Users included Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) involved in defining the requirements and end users new to the BOH application from all relevant roles ranging from cook through central director. The sessions were split into 3 components:
-
I first led a group demonstration of the entire BOH Application design.
-
This was followed by one to one moderated sessions. Users individually “clicked through” the Figma prototype, thereby simulating specific user journeys. Moderators sat with the users to capture observations and contemporaneous feedback. Group comments and feedback were also gathered via open discussion and Q & A sessions.
-
In the end, a survey was used to collect objective feedback.
Group Demo
User Testing Script
User Testing Feedback
Conclusion
The project was very well received by the client and also bolstered SVAM's reputation in providing great user-centered design expertise.
Under NYC DOE, the 2,000 schools through over 1,300 Cafeterias, which source, deliver and serve approximately 1 million meals daily, a single system will better support food services preparation and production of meals within the school’s cafeteria’s kitchens.
This Project will realize efficiency benefits across both perishable and non- perishable products. It will also streamline user entitlement across OFNS applications and deliver relevant decision-making information to business stakeholders.