About
Over the summer of 2021, I worked as a UX Design intern at Quicksand. During my remote internship, I mainly worked on the Promotions & Offers of an existing end-to-end platform aimed at digitizing the FMCG supply chain in South East Asia. This app is currently operating in 25,000+ stores in Indonesia and Philippines.
The beneficiaries of this end-to-end platform are large enterprises on the FMCG supply side who want to provide their services to the mass market. On the demand side, consumers, citizens, wholesalers, retailer/agents (MSME’s) benefit from access that this agent-led digital platform provides.
Role & Skills
UX Intern, Insight derivation, Market study, Heuristic Analysis, Wireframing, Prototyping
Process
Although the final designs of the project are confidential due to a non-disclosure agreement, the overall design process followed was user-centric and flexible, with multiple rounds of designing & feedback from the dev & business teams.
- Defining Scope & Role with Mentor
Understanding the System
The team at Quicksand has been working for over 18 months to solve the challenge of FMCG distribution to the mass market. Over the course of these 18 months, they have visited a few countries in South East Asia to understand the challenges of the stakeholders involved, and build an end to end solution for the same.
The critical front-end components of the technology suite currently comprise:
- Web application to monitor performance of the supply chain to be used by upstream stakeholders (principals, distributors, wholesalers etc)
- Mobile application to be used by agents and end-customers to carry out transactions (ordering, loyalty, payments etc)
BENEFITS ENTERPRISES
Visibility of wholesaler’s downstream interactions with their retailers through digitising the sales and ordering process.
BENEFITS WHOLESALERS
Increased sales to new retail outlets and visibility along their own distribution channels.
BENEFITS RETAILERS
Incentives, loyalty and tailored marketing to retailer and mass market customers
System Solution Specifications
(As defined by the company prior to my joining)
WHOLESALER
- Is onboarded and their unique catalogue (all products he sells) is updated on the app
- Can set prices & give discounts for customers
- Receives orders taken by agent in real time
- Can approve, decline, or update orders
RETAILER/ OUTLET OWNER
- Onboarded via agents
- Can directly order from app (less common), or give order when agent comes (more common)
- Receive offers, promos, discounts, loans & other benefits. The more they order, the more benefits they receive.
- Special promos & offers available on products by onboarded enterprises
AGENT
- Has access to all their wholesalers’ catalogues
- Explains app to outlets, takes & delivers orders, educates on promos & offers and applies them
- Can give discounts approved by wholesaler to outlet
- Sends order to wholesaler in real time
- Links wholesaler & outlet
- Main objective is to increase overall sales of wholesaler & sales from onboarded enterprises in particular
My Role
I worked on the promotions and loyalty offers on the mobile application used typically by the agents, and in a few cases, the retailers/store owners. 25,000+ stores in Indonesia and Philippines use this product directly or indirectly.
My project specifically involved:
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Improving the discoverability and usability of promotions and offers, and suggesting prompts appropriately throughout the application so as to suggest the best benefits available for the retailer, keeping in mind that the agent has minimum incentive to apply offers for the retailer.
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Driving the promos and offers the team wants to push in the application to achieve the business targets.
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Setting up a system to standardize the process of introducing new promos within the team.
Bonus: I got a chance to support my mentor in the early stages of building a loyalty program for the user.
Deriving Insights from Primary Research
The team had carried out on-ground research in Indonesia and Philippines, where the app and system is implemented and in use. As an intern, I translated the research and transcripts into actionable insights for two stakeholders: outlet owner and agent.
Outlet Owner (End User)
Agent
Identifying Types of Agents
The Creative Problem Solver
Resourceful at problem solving, seek opportunities, and are willing to jump in whenever needed
The Tactical Salesman
Meets the basic requirements, but no strong self initiative to go above and beyond
The Status Quo Laggard
Doesn't meet work requirements, falls behind targets and is hard to train
Promotions & Offers
The product provides multiple offers and promotions to the outlet owners. These are offered by different enterprises and companies (like Coca Cola & Milkmaid), and hence are varied and complex in nature.
Typically, the agent applies these offers for the outlet owner (the use-case I was tasked with). I had to keep in mind that the agent has to make multiple such outlet visits every day, and has minimum incentive to apply such complicated benefits for the outlet, since they are making sales either way.
Boiling down my role hereafter to one sentence:
How might we make the interface and flow effortless and usable for the agent, who is in a hurry to take the order and go to the next outlet?
Existing Services in the FMCG Sector
This study was carried out to identify how companies and organisations in this sector offer benefits and incentivize their users so as to make higher sales and fulfill business targets.
GOJEK
GROFERS
BIGBASKET
ZOMATO
SWIGGY
FLIPKART
The benefits and incentives identified were:
Discounts and lower prices, free delivery, surprise gifts, vouchers, membership/ loyalty program which gives user special benefits, XP and levels (gamifying the shopping experience), earning benefits by referring product to other friends, lucky draws, cashback and gift cards.
Key Takeaways
These apps are used by the end user directly, whereas the product I was working on is mainly used by an agent, who is the indirect user. Here, showing attractive visuals and showcasing winners (for instance, Grofers gives a lot of emphasis on gifts and winners to make it seem achievable and real) might not help. The focus needed to be on how the process can be made faster and more efficient for the agent.
- Visual cues in appropriate places for easy visibility and application of promotions and offers.
- Can leverage different colours and icons to differentiate between benefits of different kinds.
- Visual cues for new offers, or offers near expiry.
- Surprise gifts may seem exciting and novel to the end user.
- A system with a strong South-East Asian cultural context might be more relatable. For example, Gojek (Indonesia) has 4 levels: Warga (citizen/member), Bos (boss), Juragan (owner of an enterprise), and Anak Sultan (Sultan’s son).
- Incentivizing the agent to make use of more promotions and offers for the outlet owner.
- A global progress bar to give a better sense of progress.
Heuristic Analysis
I used the 10 usability heuristics for user interface design by Jakob Nielson to detect usability issues involved in the following tasks:
1. Selecting products from catalogue
2. Applying promotions and offers for outlet owner
3. Placing order
Key Takeaways
No distinct difference between promotions and offers visually and textually; both of which are earned in different ways and provide rewards/benefits of different natures.
Promotions, offers and points are not visible and prompted appropriately. They are easy to miss out on.
No option to filter catalogue products according to brand, benefits and offers, and no option to sort according to price, alphabet, or higher value savings.
User control and freedom cannot be exercised to its full extent because the interface does not let user undo actions in some places. Additionally, it does not give user a shorter & quicker way to add items in cart according to a theme.
The application of promos and offers heavily relies on the memory of the agent. They require the agent to recall rather than recognize, which increases the cognitive load by a lot given that the promos and offers are complex and unique in nature.
Final Solution
The insights from research and heuristic evaluation helped me identify areas and screens that could be improved and introduced. Given the limited scope of my internship and my limited knowledge of the complex product, my mentor and I decided that quick iterations would be the way to go about, such that I could suggest small design ideas and rely on the team's knowledge of the product to guide further revisions. My final deliverable included 25+ screens and a standardized template to introduce promotions in the product.
The final screens and designs are confidential due to a non-disclosure agreement, but I'd be happy to discuss over mail :)
Challenges and Takeaways
Joining an Ongoing Project: Although it was often tricky to understand and find the right balance between exploring and sticking to pre-decided patterns, the latter half of the internship helped me get a better hold of this. If I were to do this again, I would ask more questions and challenge decisions taken prior to my joining.
Detailing a Small Part of a Complicated Product: Previously, all projects I had worked on involved a funnel approach: an open ended start narrowing down to detailing and specifications. In this project, my brief was not very open ended, hence, I spent a lot of time detailing out solutions in a complicated product to a level I have never done before.