Fullbay’s main set of features related to creating work orders for heavy duty vehicle repair was originally designed with 4 different personas in mind. A service writer, technician, parts manager, and office manager all had different custom views of the same work order which worked well for large shops.
But what happens when you are a much smaller shop juggling multiple roles?
The feedback we got was that it was hard to use Fullbay as a one-person shop because it required switching back and forth between multiple views designed for multiple roles.
As I empathized with our customers it became clear the most common overlap was between technician and parts manager and the biggest pain point was that the parts management page was too cumbersome for small operations.
There is a lot going on with this page. There are blue buttons all over the screen cluttering the UI. There are no labels for the icon buttons so users don't know what their purpose is. It is also very unclear what the user is supposed to do at any given status.
There is a lot going on with this page. There are blue buttons all over the screen cluttering the UI. There are no labels for the icon buttons so users don't know what their purpose is. It is also very unclear what the user is supposed to do at any given status.
The status on the old view made the line all one solid color which made it really difficult to read, especially on mobile devices directly in the sun. The new status indicator increases the contrast, making it easier to read and a cleaner interface.
There is functionality on the old view that allows for quoting a part from multiple vendors that is user for less than 5% of parts. By removing this from the UI it makes it a lot more user friendly.
There were also icon buttons on each item that were not used very often and also had no labels so users didn't know what they did. By taking those same actions and putting them into the ellipsis button it gives space for future growth.
The old view is not mobile responsive and is built using table rows. The new view simplifies the UI and allows for modern architecture that looks great on desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes.
There were a lot of ways in which I thought I could simplify the part management page but as I got feedback on my designs with large customers it became clear that there was a vocal group who did not want the existing parts page to change. The “power” users loved it even though it was very complex. They had gotten used to it and changing it was going to cause problems.
In the end the solution that worked best for everyone was to simplify the most common part management features and add them to the technician view.
One of the big problems was users did not know what to do next. They might see what the status of the part was but were unaware how to progress the part to the end goal of "Received". I made a next step column with a clear call to action, giving simple instructions to the user how to progress.
The status on the old view made the line all one solid color which made it really difficult to read, especially on mobile devices directly in the sun. The new status indicator increases the contrast, making it easier to read and a cleaner interface.
There is functionality on the old view that allows for quoting a part from multiple vendors that is used for less than 5% of parts. By removing this from the UI it makes it a lot more user friendly.
There were also icon buttons on each item that were not used very often and also had no labels so users didn't know what they did. By taking those same actions and putting them into the ellipsis button it gives space for the labels and space for future growth.
The launch of the feature was very well received with the large majority of users choosing to use this view over the previous one. There were a couple of hold outs but that's okay. A valuable lesson I learned from this project was that not all users have the same needs and giving them the right tools for the job is more valuable than trying to force one particular workflow onto everyone.
The best validation was interviewing customers post-launch to gather feedback where one of the shop managers said this:
"I like that new parts view a lot better. I am a simple guy and it just makes more sense to me. The button thing was a good idea because it gives my people a better understanding of where we are at in the whole process."
- Andy the Shop Manager
There is a lot going on with this page. There are blue buttons all over the screen cluttering the UI. There are no labels for the icon buttons so users don't know what their purpose is. It is also very unclear what the user is supposed to do at any given status.
The status on the old view made the line all one solid color which made it really difficult to read, especially on mobile devices directly in the sun. The new status indicator increases the contrast, making it easier to read and a cleaner interface.
There is functionality on the old view that allows for quoting a part from multiple vendors that is user for less than 5% of parts. By removing this from the UI it makes it a lot more user friendly.
There were also icon buttons on each item that were not used very often and also had no labels so users didn't know what they did. By taking those same actions and putting them into the ellipsis button it gives space for future growth.
The old view is not mobile responsive and is built using table rows. The new view simplifies the UI and allows for modern architecture that looks great on desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes.
