Project 3
FLOW
Console Design:
About: Flow is a B2B2C SaaS platform that enables global commerce capabilities for retailers. The software and API's empower brands with global and local payment options, shipping carriers, product catalog translation, localization plus duty and tax calculations.
Project Description: Flow clients are provided with a console dashboard to manage and tune their global commerce settings - including which payment methods they want to offer, what shipping carriers they want to use and defining their customer experience for any and every country. I was tasked with a project that would enable a merchant to control which of the products from the master catalog are or are not available for a specific customer in this experience region.
Phase 1.
Research: In order to determine the information necessary for merchants to control the experiences of their clients, I looked to ERP and EDI applications that I had personally used or was familiar with. Some of these included Netsuite, RLM and Joor. Some of the important things I had to keep in mind was:
- Considering how this functionality would fit into the overall architecture of the platform. Should it be part of the overall process of creating and managing experiences or should it stand on its own?
- Should the console only exclude product functionality with default being that all products are included in an experience unless explicitly excluded. Should there be both functionalities or have only exclusions - why or why not?
- What functionality would I add or remove to make the job of the merchant easier? How should I design for this?
Phase 2.
Dashboard: This portion of the Client Management Portal provides users with quick and insightful information as it relates to their clients experience. The dashboard caters to personalization and prioritization of assigned metrics and real-time data at the users discretion.
Phase 3.
Product Management: This section was developed for users to exclude categories and / or items from the client experience at a high level - primarily with a concentrated group of categories. The client will not have access or visibility to any of the information excluded unless the merchant reinstates those categories and / or items.
Phase 4.
Master Catalog: This section differs from the Product Management section in that the available information is presented in a visible format that allows the user to perform various sort functionalities, report outputs and exclusions at the SKU level. The client will not have access or visibility to any of the information excluded unless the merchant reinstates those categories and / or items.
Phase 5.
Create Rules: This section of the CMP gives merchants added control over what information from the master catalog are made available to their client within a specific region. The user can establish set rules made up of assigned queries that can be turned on and off within a client experience whenever the merchant feels. The user can create and apply as many rules as they would like.
Phase 6.
Reflection: These are the complete wireframes that were presented to the design team and front-end developers at Flow. The preceding annotations were the talking points I used during my presentation.
