Revolutionizing the Wholesale Market: My UX-UI Design Journey with Whipay

TL;DR,

"As a UX-UI Designer, I had the incredible opportunity to work on Whipay – a digital wholesale marketplace that streamlines the supply process for businesses in the food industry – as part of a six month bootcamp UX design training. By enabling restaurants, hotels, and bars to connect with top-notch suppliers, Whipay helps them save on costs and eliminate the hassle of transportation and logistics. The tools we utilized for this project included Figma, Trello, Jamboard, Discord, and Miro."

Problem

One of the main challenges we faced was designing a system to manage complex coordination between various parties that was being held through Whatsapp chats. The stevedores were responsible for loading fruit and vegetable boxes onto the truck of the delivery drivers, the stevedore order requester. For delivery drivers orders, the requester is the restaurant's chef, who places an order for a combination of fruit and vegetable boxes through Whipay. The coordination process was further complicated by delivery drivers serving multiple clients and stevedores working with multiple delivery drivers.

Solution

Step 1: Collaboration & Research

Collaborating with two fellow design students, I focused on designing the new login and registration flows, as well as creating the workflow for taking orders for stevedores and delivery driver – a feature that previously didn't exist. We were actively involved in every stage of the process, from survey creation and audio transcription to user journey mapping and identifying user personas.

Step 2: System Development

To address the challenge of complex coordination, we developed a system where the smallest unit of coordination was the driver-stevedore order, and multiple driver-stevedore orders formed a single order for the client chef. This allowed us to compose the chef orders with complex coordination between multiple drives and stevedores.

Step 3: Analysis & Implementation

We achieved this system by conducting a detailed user journey analysis, opportunity inventory assessment, and identifying key findings and ideas. Utilizing Trello and Scrum Agile methodologies, we prioritized tasks and created low-fidelity wireframes before progressing to high-fidelity designs and prototypes.

Prototype Video

The video below demonstrates the stevedore user interface designed to manage and coordinate orders with drivers. In this interface, the user can scroll through the list of orders and decide whether to accept or reject the ones they are interested in. Upon accepting an order, the user can view its notes and details, including information about the gate where the driver has parked for loading within the facility. They can also update the status of orders, marking them as coordinating, loading, or completed.

In addition, the interface features an order history section, where users can review past payment dates for their personal accounting purposes. To further enhance the user experience, we incorporated a loading tips section with short videos. This section allows Whipay to share relevant knowledge and best practices with end users, helping improve overall service quality. We gathered this idea from end users during our surveys, highlighting the importance of user feedback in the design process.

Results

Whipay's mission is to revolutionize the wholesale market for the Peruvian food industry by offering a convenient, efficient, and cost-effective way for businesses to purchase fresh produce directly from producers and wholesalers. Based on our designs developers will be able to facilitate the coordination between involved personas; for instance drivers can coordinate changes with chefs and add more driver-stevedore orders depending on the needs, also stevedores can quickly identify drivers at the right gate and time. The summary of the proposed solution can be found in the high-fidelity designs and prototypes, currently only available in Spanish.

Prototype Interfaces

One of the main proposed features is to manage the status of the orders after its acceptance, since the stevedores can't spend much time chatting with drivers.

Then the interaction requires one touch to confirm the order, one touch to confirm the loading has started, and one touch to confirm that the order has been completed. There is the option to start a conversation with the driver through a phone call or Whatsapp chat as well.

Conclusion

In conclusion, working on Whipay's UX-UI design has been a rewarding experience, allowing me to develop innovative solutions for complex coordination problems and ultimately enhance the user experience for suppliers and clients in the food industry. The successful completion of this project was crucial to my bootcamp course approval, and I'm proud to share that we received great feedback from Whipay's CEO. This project now serves as a prime example of thoughtful design and problem-solving in my portfolio.