PROJECT OBJECTIVE

Design a unified system of five enterprise applications to support the operational processes at Mail Innovations (MI), UPS.

TURNING POINT

After several months of researching the legacy and future-state workflows, I realized the business processes were interconnected and bigger than a single application. There were multiple development teams working on features from different applications which resulted in siloed decision-making. The business goals of increasing the speed and accuracy of mail delivery could not be accomplished without focusing on optimizing the process and user experience as a whole system.

MY ROLE

I guided product leadership and 3 development teams through a process of holistic research and design of a system of 5 applications centered around the users’ success at completing their jobs to ensure speed and accuracy of mail processing and transportation.

  1. I spearheaded systems thinking by leading continuous research, identifying system-wide problems and opportunities. I pushed for holistic and strategic problem-solving.

  2. My research identified and connected business process changes to specific business goals and user needs.

  3. I directed the platform architecture to support the need for connectivity of data across the system and providing visibility to mail progress in the system.

  4. I built cohesive user experiences that mapped to the daily tasks of diverse operational cross-system roles and supported the business goals.

Timeframe

2021 - 2024

Client

UPS, Mail Innovations

Role

Sr. UX/ UI Designer, performing as a UX Researcher and a Sr. Product Designer

Collaborating with

3 development teams, 3 Product Owners, 3 Scrum Masters and MI senior management

Work Mode

Remote

CASE STUDY

Context

The Mail Innovations (MI) department managed mail processing and transportation across the UPS network for commercial clients, including Amazon, Macy’s, Barnes & Noble. 

I led the product strategy and UX/ UI design of an internal system of 5 applications, which while enabling the processing and transportation of mail in the UPS network, had to also support the organizational goal of increasing the accuracy and speed of delivering mail.

Three cross-functional engineering teams worked concurrently on the new infrastructure, back-end services, and app development. The MI department was following SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) methodology.

MI Suite Applications and Users

The 5 applications were used to process, label, route and transport mail in North America. The applications were used by a variety of users. I researched and defined the user types and jobs-to-be-done for each application. I defined 3 user types whose jobs spanned multiple applications.

The Design Challenge

Design a system where diverse users successfully completed cross-functional daily jobs to ensure speed and accuracy of mail delivery. Ensure design decisions were made holistically and strategically.

Challenges

  • No direction was given. The goal was broadly defined as “we need to modernize the applications. We need to increase the speed, accuracy and efficiency of mail delivery”.

  • 3 development teams to work with.

  • No other UX research and design resources. Before I joined the MI dev teams the decision-making had been heavily focused on the technical aspects of the projects. UX decisions had been made ad hoc, on intuition, with limited knowledge of actual users.

  • Highly complex business processes. Knowledge was fragmented and siloed.

  • 2 separate workflows and user journeys for air and ground transportation modes.

  • Diverse operational roles with a variety of jobs for each application and the suite.

Role and Responsibilities

I acted as a core product partner to senior management in defining the business goals, user needs, product vision, and led the UX efforts for 3 development teams

Over the course of 3 years I collaborated closely with a Sr. Program Manager, responsible for the modernization initiative, and 3 development teams each comprised of a Project Manager, Scrum Master and onsite or off-shore engineers.

  • I changed a top-down piecemeal requirements gathering process to collaborative discovery and problem-solving. I led regular weekly research and synthesis workshops with the Sr. Program Manager, the Project Managers and Scrum Masters.

  • I socialized research and synthesis, and aligned teams on the context and rationale behind design decisions.

  • I created prototypes that were continuously reviewed and validated with stakeholders and engineers. 

  • I collaborated with the Scrum Masters on feature and story writing and prioritization.

Defining Complex Business Processes and Goals

As soon as I finished documenting the legacy system and processes, I started working on a high level visual of the envisioned, new end-to-end business process. It provided context about the role of each application we were working on.

Summary of the cross-system user jobs and how they connected to the business goals

Creating Solutions that Connect Users’ Jobs and Business Goals

I directed the platform architecture to support the business goals and user needs for visibility and connectivity of information

I led system-wide research to identify cross-system problems and opportunities, and ensure strategic and holistic problem-solving.

System-wide research goals:

  • Understand end-to-end operational processes supported by multiple applications.

  • Connect operational processes to business goals.

  • Understand data moving between various applications.

  • Define user needs and goals spanning multiple applications.

Research methods:

  • Subject Matter Expert, stakeholder and user interviews and discussions

  • Virtual facility and process exploration - we looked at pictures, videos, floor plans to understand key processes and workflows.

Synthesis

I started by documenting the legacy movement of mail pieces through the UPS pipeline. The research helped me understand the role of the legacy applications, key process steps and terminology. I worked with the Sr. Program Manager to define the high-level business pain points and envisioned opportunities for improvement.

Lifecycle of a mail piece - legacy processes is a visual documenting the movement of mail in the UPS network, the legacy applications and mail related data used, legacy pain points and opportunities for improvement.

FUTURE END-TO-END PROCESS

  • High-level steps

  • Applications and relationships

LEGACY SYSTEM & END-TO-END PROCESSES

  • Main steps

  • Legacy applications

  • Pain points

  • Opportunities

Moving mail in the UPS network - modernized processes and applications - a visual documenting the high-level modernized MI operations - processing, sorting, labeling and grouping mail in containers, loading onto trailers, creating accompanying electronic documentation, transferring mail from an outbound facility to an inbound facility.

LINKING HIGH-LEVEL PROCESS CHANGES TO BUSINESS GOALS

LINKING APP SPECIFIC PROCESS CHANGES TO BUSINESS OUTCOMES

  • Applications

  • High-level changes

  • App-specific outcomes

  • Overall business outcomes

Connecting process changes to business goals

In the past the development teams received piecemeal requirements from senior management and their work was focused on how to build things. Because of the complexity of the business processes any attempts to understand the why’s behind most business requirements felt overwhelming. This led to fragmented work, limited context and short term decision making.

To put things in a logical order and give our teams context and a North Star, I used the findings from the research on the legacy and new processes (see above) and linked the existing pain points to the proposed process changes and desired business outcomes.

To deepen our understanding of how application-specific process changes contributed to the larger organizational goals, I created the following visual. The visual was validated with the Sr. Program Manager and a Project Manager, and reviewed with the 3 development teams.

Defining Cross-System User Types and Jobs

I documented cross-system user needs, user types and journeys to ensure our teams had a user-centered approach to problem-solving and design

Three user types used multiple applications in the system to plan and facilitate the movement of mail in the network. I worked with the Sr. Program Manager, a Project Managers and a National Transportation Admin as primary subject matter experts, but I also talked to Operations Managers and Supervisors to understand:

  • what were their daily responsibilities

  • how they used the apps

  • what was important for them to see and do

  • what was currently missing

My goal was to define the user jobs that contributed to the business goals and ensure our solutions were designed to help users perform their jobs successfully.

Ensuring connectivity of information was essential for automating the business processes and increasing the users’ visibility to mail in the system, which directly contributed to the accuracy and efficiency of moving mail in the UPS network.

  • I helped the product triad shift from thinking piecemeal, one application at a time to considering the entire system.

  • I worked with the Sr. Program Manager on unified data flows for ground and air mail in the system and created visualizations.

  • The data flows laid the groundwork for creating solutions that addressed the users’ need for visibility and connectivity of information.

  • The data flows served as a solid ground for further decision-making, team alignment and planning.

I led the creation of automated mail statuses across the system to support users’ need for visibility to mail in the system

I initiated a conversation about adding meaningful, automated and consistent mail statuses across the Mail Innovations applications and worked closely with the Sr. Program Manager to define the dependencies, triggers and relationships between the applications. In the past mail statuses were used in only one application and were added manually. However, the primary job of Operations Managers and Transportation Admins was to monitor, facilitate and trouble-shoot the movement of mail in the system, a job they could not do effectively because the applications were disconnected and Operations Managers relied on observation and checking several applications multiple times.

Automating and connecting mail statuses across the system:

  • I initiated the creation of a document that captured the relationship between system and user actions and the respective changes across the system.

  • I documented and validated triggers, dependencies and app-specific status changes.

Below is an Applications and Mail Statuses Excel file that I created, discussed and validated to ensure we had a solid vision and teams worked with understanding and alignment.

Enhancing mail status meaning

In addition to creating the framework, I proposed meaningful status naming and color coding conventions to facilitate decision making and prioritization.

The visual below shows how mail statuses were used in 3 of the applications and how color was used to enhance meaning.

Creating a connected system of applications that supported users’ jobs

The decisions that we made as I worked on prototypes and validated them with the various stakeholders and development teams were all based on a solid understanding of the users’ jobs in support of the business objective of moving mail in the system quickly and accurately.

The Impact

I was able to make senior management and product teams zoom out and develop a system-wide clarity and vision for the future. This led to a system-wide product roadmap and an MVP plan for two separate mail transportation modes - air and ground. 

The research I did and the visuals I created put concrete ideas at the table and enabled conversations that until then were impossible to have.

As a result, teams were able to align and prioritize problems and work on solutions that addressed concrete user needs and provided clear business outcomes. 

Because we had 3 separate development teams working concurrently, having a roadmap and criteria to prioritize work was really helpful in streamlining everyone’s efforts and cutting out time and effort spent on disparate or unnecessary work.

In addition to designing for application-specific user needs, I helped the teams address cross-system user needs. As my research showed, user needs like visibility and speed could only be accomplished by making sure the applications in the system communicated the right data and allowed users to access the data they needed easily.

I joined the MI team through Cognizant and unfortunately was pulled out of the project before I could see the MVP air flow completed. Before leaving the project, the MI teams were still working on and testing parts of the MVP air roadmap. Because of the complexity and scope of the workflows, development work had to be done in stages. Having a roadmap ensured that even though we developed and tested work in stages, we were heading in an approved and clear direction. 

Having a clear vision and understanding about how everything connected ensured that we moved in the right direction and allowed us to pivot or course correct faster, more effectively and less expensively.