Streamlining Innovation Business Planning (IBP) Process for Unilever 

Streamlining Innovation Business Planning (IBP) Process for Unilever 

Client

Unilever

Skills

UX Design

UI Design

User research

Interviews

Prototyping

User testing

Design Systems

Data & Analytics

Interaction design

Time line

Nov '22 - Aug '23

Team

1 X Designer, 4 X Developers,

2 X Data analysts, 1 X Automation solution expert, 1 X PBI Expert, 1 X Business Analysts, 1 X PM.

3X

Improved Business

This impacted the overall business success and improved the efficiency by the faster report generation practices.

8000

hrs

of man hours saved anually

The new design saved huge amount of unwanted time spent on completing the tasks.

100%

User satisfaction reported

Post design usability study reported that users enjoy using the new software with the new design a lot with "0" dissatisfactions.

About

Fusion is a WebApp based control tower that drives accountability and discipline by tracking deliverables vs plans across multiple processes in the Innovation Planning (IBP) cycle.

Currently Integrated Business Planning process is not well connected across teams, business units and hence there is no standardized operating model. This led to the development of Fusion.

Content

About

Fusion is a WebApp based control tower that drives accountability and discipline by tracking deliverables vs plans across multiple processes in the Innovation Planning (IBP) cycle.

Currently Integrated Business Planning process is not well connected across teams, business units and hence there is no standardized operating model. This led to the development of Fusion.

Roles & responsiblities

Played a key role throughout the project being the sole designer for the project, I had the entire responsibility on all the design needs from

Defining the problem
Set the design direction for the design & team
conducting user research
Drive ideation workshops and design showcases
collaborating with engineers
Manage design scope
Monitor design delivery
testing builds.

Content

Roles & responsiblities

Played a key role throughout the project being the sole designer for the project, I had the entire responsibility on all the design needs from

Defining the problem
Set the design direction for the design & team
conducting user research
Drive ideation workshops and design showcases
collaborating with engineers
Manage design scope
Monitor design delivery
testing builds.

Business Goals

Transform and Modernise

Transform the current tool which is in a power app to web app for faster access and to bring improvement in-terms of User experience and to modernise the tool.

Fasten the tracking

Find a solution to streamline and redesign to build a web app that helps users to do quicker tracking process. Which also improves better user engagement.

Craft for Users

Conduct a research workshop with the target audiences to understand their pain points, needs and goals to design the tool accordingly for their use cases.

Business Problem

Inability of users to finalize their tracking process in a timely manner led to a postponement in the generation of reports for executive-level individuals. This caused a subsequent delay in the assessment of the performance of a brand or product in the marketplace.

The design chellenge

HMW design a solution which would work well for a variety of different contexts and allow users to quickly track the IBP process within deadlines that generate reports quickly on time and thereby improve business outcome with proper user research that helps in understanding their pulses and to implement a solution that solves all the existing problems and further adds more value to the tool used for various regions?

Other challenges and obstacles

Collaboration Challenge

The project was cross-functional initiative that involved people from various teams like Data analysts, Automation Experts, Developers & BA's.

Conducting Research

Conducting research worksop with such a large user group and users from 3 different country in a remote approach was very challenging.

Process and Business

Their company operations were extremely intricate, managing a vast array of brands and products, and getting and understanding of their process was quite challenging.

The Solution

The overall solution we decided to build one control tower (i.e) a tool bringing everything together that helps users access to all the required functions that are all scattered across currently, right from data loading and tracking to report generation at one place and added more functional values that leveraged the business accordingly.

Key things implemented

Following users mental model: Came up with a design that doesn't disrupt the user's mental mode by almost bringing in the look, feel and functions of spreadsheets. The current users who use excel spread sheet to complete this the IBP process for more than a decade, they found it much easier to migrate from spreadsheets to the current web app. Just like excel or any other spreadsheets the users can directly make edits to any cells and update accordingly.

Brand Coherence: Designed the tool with all the required brand guideline which ensures that your brand's visual language is consistently applied across all digital touchpoints, promoting a strong and coherent brand presence.

Improved User Experience & Interface: Built an experience that is user-centric and caters to the user's needs and wants. With consistent UI elements and interactions, users can easily navigate through your products, leading to a more intuitive and user-friendly experience.

Information Architecture: Improved content and visual hierarchy to help users to understand the information provided for better and faster use case.

Streamlined flows: Simplified all the flows, so that it made it easy for the users to complete tasks in a quicker time without getting lost, navigation was seamless across modules.

Seamless Tracking: Ability to track and add inputs for 1000+ Products at a time without any complexity by providing all the necessary functions within one place.

Improved filtering options: Introduced cutting-edge filter options with superior capabilities allowing the users to pinpoint and find the suitable product from an array of 1000 items they own.

Real time collaboration: Enabled transparency on every changes and added comment feature for every item, enabling customers to engage and seek insight from the community to clear up uncertainties. This led to a decrease in unproductive time spent in debates.

Flexible data loads: Given more importance from data load perspective as data plays a key role here, enabling loading of data from various sources.

Product Demo: We designed a simple demo video pointing out all the new features and functions which helped all the users to understand the tool.

Implementing system feedback: This provided users with confirmation for each task they perform, alleviating frequent uncertainties about task completion.

Elegantly Crafted Reports: Constructed Power BI reports augmenting user-friendly visuals, improving aesthetic appeal to aid user's data assimilation process with minimized cognitive strain.

Design Systems: This enabled us to achieve uniformity throughout the software, thereby enriching the users' comprehension of its features. Simultaneously, it facilitated the creation of a component library that can be utilized across the array of tools developed by the same D&A team. Which also resulted in better handoff.

The Design Process

Pre-Research

Research

Ideation

Refinement

Stakeholder sessions

Based on the workshop, we captured goals for all stakeholders, which became a direction for the project.

Everything in one tool

Making it modern, advanced and powerfull

Craft for audience

Fasten Tracking

Development Friendly

Stakeholder session overview

We conducted stakeholder session back and forth with all the stake holders to understand the actual business goal and to define the project's purpose and objectives. What is the project trying to achieve, and what are the desired outcomes?

Some of the things that we discussed before the start,

Set deadlines and milestones.

what are the key KPI's that need to be achieved along the way?

Identify any constraints or limitations legal or other constraints that will impact the project's goals or objectives?

Connected with people from various tech fronts to understand the technologies that are used and had a ice breaker session with the cross functional team on planning for collaboration.

Some of the things that we discussed before the start,

Set deadlines and milestones.

what are the key KPI's that need to be achieved along the way?

Identify any constraints or limitations legal or other constraints that will impact the project's goals or objectives?

Connected with people from various tech fronts to understand the technologies that are used and had a ice breaker session with the cross functional team on planning for collaboration.

Stakeholder session overview

Some of the things that we discussed before the start,

Set deadlines and milestones.

what are the key KPI's that need to be achieved along the way?

Identify any constraints or limitations legal or other constraints that will impact the project's goals or objectives?

Connected with people from various tech fronts to understand the technologies that are used and had a ice breaker session with the cross functional team on planning for collaboration.

The takeaways

This session helped us to understand the current functionality of the tool and define the bussines objectives also helped in clarify some of the the general doubts that we had.

Pre-Research

Research

Ideation

Refinement

Research Phase

We started with research in-order to minimize the hypothesis and guessing around, and design a product which will match the customers’ expectations and business goals.

Actual end Users

Primary Users

They are the brand managers from various teams from the regions of North America that includes countries like USA & Canada.

Secondary Users

They are the senior managers of those brands who monitor the products or brand's performance by generating reports.

Total no of users from both the team and all regions.

Users from both the team and all regions.

4800+

No of users involved in interviews

Users involved in interviews

45

No of users involved in Usability testing

Users involved in Usability testing

30

User Interviews

User Interviews were conducted in a moderated way via the video calls, asking the users to answer the set of questions that we prepared, that is considered having the business requirements in mind for this version 2.0.

Some of the questions were like from,

Open discovery,

Understanding users tasks,

Performing & showing,

Talking about Pain points & Problems,

Recalling the past,

Closing out the interview.

Some of the questions were like from,

Open discovery,

Understanding users tasks,

Performing & showing,

Talking about Pain points & Problems,

Recalling the past,

Closing out the interview.

User Interviews

Some of the questions were like from,

Open discovery,

Understanding users tasks,

Performing & showing,

Talking about Pain points & Problems,

Recalling the past,

Closing out the interview.

Pre Usability Testing

We conducted Pre-usability test with the existing power app in a non-moderated way asking the users to complete a flow and write down their experience and frustrations.

Pre Usability Testing

We conducted Pre-usability test with the existing power app in a non-moderated way asking the users to complete a flow and write down their experience and frustrations.

User Insights

Need a super simple interface to handle complicated large data sets.

Some user sayings

Taking more time.

Even smaller tasks are taking more time to complete. I had to go through more steps for completion.

The current tool is frustrating

While completing important tasks this often struck at a point.

It is manual everywhere.

Most of the processes and tasks have to be done manually. I can see only minimal difference between while working manually and when currently with this tool.

My brain is totally eaten up

Understanding certain things consumes more of my mental capacity. Many things are not easily recognizable.

Can't understand what it does

After completing some uploads, downloads or after adding any updates, the system is not responding back with the status.

Not able to focus on particular data

Having the need to work within this huge loads of data, focusing on specific data makes it difficult.

74%

Users says that all required basic functions are scattered across.

34%

Users feel like they are working in space of overloaded data.

85%

Users need just a simple tool with all the necessary functionalities.

At the end of research

This research led to the discovery of more opportunities by understanding users and their actual IBP tracking process, which helped us to not only define their problem also paved way for the implementation of new innovative ideas which helped in simplifying this complex process.

We Identified and wanted to focus on some of the main users problems

Bring everthing together

Currently all the processes are done via various different platforms, the ultimate goal to bring them all together.

No user centricity

Build an experience that is user-centric and caters to the user's needs and wants.

Minimizing the manual tasks

Trying to automate things and enabling specific functions that helps reduce the users effort.

Lack of data hygiene

To define content, visual hierarchy and organise the data to help users to understand the information they need and learn how to use the app faster.

Challenges with task execution & navigation

Complex user journey's. Navigating between different modules poses a challenge for users. Completing a certain tasks was like a very difficult process lacking continuity accross.

Bringing Inclusivity

Creating designs that are universally accessible at a basic level, as our user base comprises a wide range of individuals.

Pre-Research

Research

Ideation

Refinement

Ideation Phase

Brainstorming on how to improve the tool

Post Research

I realised how much cognitive load users were dealing with while trying to find out what to do, where to do when to do, how to do, etc.

Users statements gave me the direction to come up with the new simplified flow, with reduced stages and which will focus more on lowering memory load and will help users in decision making.

I realised how much cognitive load users were dealing with while trying to find out what to do, where to do when to do, how to do, etc.

Users statements gave me the direction to come up with the new simplified flow, with reduced stages and which will focus more on lowering memory load and will help users in decision making.

Post Research

I realised how much cognitive load users were dealing with while trying to find out what to do, where to do when to do, how to do, etc.

Users statements gave me the direction to come up with the new simplified flow, with reduced stages and which will focus more on lowering memory load and will help users in decision making.

Understanding the gaps

With the help of research we were able to understand the user's current journey. We compared that with the actual business processes and that found to be there were many gaps which led to the potential downside.

Understanding the gaps

Crafting a fresh flow

Started defining the user flows, after getting an understading about the actual business process and having all the users statements.

The true objective was to gain knowledge, comprehend and rectify issues in the existing user experience and to streamline all processes.

Designing this user flow led to the discovery of more features and functions which helped us to design a simple approach for the users without complicating things.

Started defining the user flows, after getting an understading about the actual business process and having all the users statements.

The true objective was to gain knowledge, comprehend and rectify issues in the existing user experience and to streamline all processes.

Designing this user flow led to the discovery of more features and functions which helped us to design a simple approach for the users without complicating things.

Crafting a fresh flow

Started defining the user flows, after getting an understading about the actual business process and having all the users statements.

The true objective was to gain knowledge, comprehend and rectify issues in the existing user experience and to streamline all processes.

Designing this user flow led to the discovery of more features and functions which helped us to design a simple approach for the users without complicating things.

I facilitated several brainstorming sessions with stakeholders to understand their perspective on use-case discoverability

Connecting ideas with use cases

My ultimate goal was to bring our ideas closes to users needs and business goals for crafting an inspiring user journey.

Defining key features

We came with number of new interesting features and we listed down them one by one. These features added more value to the tool that satisfies the users needs and making it a favourable for the business.

The brainstorming session is not over here, we even had many sessions while working on the final UI's also and came up with better ideas for better designs.

Also to make things easier we built information architecture defining all the components to make it very clearer for the users to present data.

The brainstorming session is not over here, we even had many sessions while working on the final UI's also and came up with better ideas for better designs.

Also to make things easier we built information architecture defining all the components to make it very clearer for the users to present data.

Defining key features

The brainstorming session is not over here, we even had many sessions while working on the final UI's also and came up with better ideas for better designs.

Also to make things easier we built information architecture defining all the components to make it very clearer for the users to present data.

Refinement

I aimed for a solution in which people would connect with the tool emotionally. Something which will bring users back to work and they feel happy and engaged when they use it.

Having a huge data sets with over 4,50,000+ items (combined for all modules) and enabling the users to track and to add other input functionalities for each of those items with a hassle-free experience is a huge challenge.

Started approaching the final UI's by iterating from the rough wireframes for the initial set of screens.

Final design approach

The overall context is to make it simple that users can easily handle and play with this huge number of items or data. Bringing a very straight forward UI design approach enabling all responses back and forth with the tool and the user ignoring the complexity factor.

At the interaction level, the focus was to help users in decision-making. I focused on minimal gesture-based interaction and showed all the necessary information in the first view.

I started exploring various layout and navigation options. After lots of iterations and discussions with users, I closed on the designs which had a lesser learning curve.

At the interaction level, the focus was to help users in decision-making. I focused on minimal gesture-based interaction and showed all the necessary information in the first view.

I started exploring various layout and navigation options. After lots of iterations and discussions with users, I closed on the designs which had a lesser learning curve.

Final design approach

At the interaction level, the focus was to help users in decision-making. I focused on minimal gesture-based interaction and showed all the necessary information in the first view.

I started exploring various layout and navigation options. After lots of iterations and discussions with users, I closed on the designs which had a lesser learning curve.

Interaction & prototyping

The entire tool was designed with all the interactiveness and had a clean connection across screens.

The actual motive of using all the interactions and prototyping is not to just convey the design ideas to developers also helped understanding the stake holders what the designs are actually meant while reviewing with them.

The entire tool was designed with all the interactiveness and had a clean connection across screens.

Interaction & prototyping

The entire tool was designed with all the interactiveness and had a clean connection across screens.

Design system documentaion

I also defined the design system components at the minimal level making it consistent across the tool.

The overall context of design system is that to make easier the task of developers to maintain a library and and also this will help us to maintain consistency and making it easier for scaling up when any additional functionalities added which helps building the designs easier and quicker.

I also defined the design system components at the minimal level making it consistent across the tool.

Design system documentaion

I also defined the design system components at the minimal level making it consistent across the tool.

Handoff

The entire handoff process was done stage by stage like a " Hot potato process" so that we can meet the deadlines pretty much quickly. Connected with developers teams to help them understand the design functionalities and had a detailed walkthrough on various flows, design system components and its states and specific constrains to follow, so that the space between the design and developed screens get reduced etc.

Handoff

Findings

The journey of designing this application has been a significant learning experience for the whole group. I garnered the chance to comprehend diverse technologies and manage extensive data sets.

I've gained a clearer perspective on designing for substantial data. Moreover, delving into core UX processes such as user interviews and usability assessments was an enlightening venture. It highlighted the significant role research can play in positively influencing the formation of a product tool like this.

Thanks for looking at my case study!

Due to NDA restrictions, I've primarily elucidated processes, keeping software functionality discussions minimal!

If you have any more questions or want to know more details, please don't hesitate to contact me. For now, please consider checking my other work, my experiments, or learn more about me.

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