Discover Order Supply…. From your Local Bakeries to your Top Confectionery Establishment.
Find your favorite Supplier in a One-Click order and Delivery System.
This is a Portfolio Project Challenge from my Google UX Design Certificate, that was grounded in real world research, observing problems and challenges in the confectionery industry and ideating possible solutions to improvise an easier way to operate a good Supply & Demand system. This mobile app was designed for bakeries and small to large businesses like retail stores, shops, supermarkets, food eateries and any sales outlets or the general Individual that buys, sells and consumes confectionary Products like Breads, Cakes and Pastries from Bakeries, this app ensures an improved and easy supply process from a wide range of Bakeries to their customers, meeting their demands quickly from any preferred Location, Ordering product supply and tracking Order to delivery.
Adegun Mayowa
Figma & Adobe XD
UX Design Process
Mobile App
Lagos, Nigeria
Portfolio Project
Confectionery Industry
UI/UX
Designer
Every stage of this project was grounded with a solid foundation of the UX design process to back up its quality, Observing The Confectionery Industry problems and improvising possible solutions and improvement to ensure the best user experience for Bakeries and small to large businesses that deals confectionery products and for consumption.
Observing certain problems in the confectionary industry and discovering challenges through research, Interviews and Surveys.
Defining The Problem and Goal statement, using interview results creating personas and storyboards to get a clearer view of users pain point and matching their concerns with intended solutions
Brainstorming around the problems to ideate possible solutions with 5W and crazy 8, observing the competitive market for current similar solution.
implementing all ideated solutions into a structured Layout, creating visual designs and prototypes.
Testing designed prototype with users through a usability study.
iterating on findings and designing a complete solution and improvements
Bakeries are confectionary institutions that manufacture Baked goods such as, Bread, Cakes and Pastries. and are mostly established as manufacturers and suppliers of confectionery products, theyre mostly being operated as manufacturers of baked products to wholesalers and retail business that sells baked goods to food institutions for reselling and consumption.
Growing up in Lagos Nigeria, I Observed most of the local bakeries i knew seem to be operating a monopolized system of supplying their product in every area they’re established.
Retail businesses that deals confectionery products, at their early stage, have been conditioned to manually look for bakeries around their location to supply Breads and other confectionery products for their business, and so does the general public that consumes Bakery products.
Bakeries produce confectionary products
* Traditional door to door trade system
* Conveying products in a delivery vehicle to customers from one shop to another
Supplies products according to the number of customers encountered and in need of products, either for reselling or consumption
NB: This is a traditional Door to Door delivery system Bakeries Practice in Nigeria
Business Owners who are wholesalers, retailers, store owners, supermarkets, food eateries, and any sales outlet that deals confectionery products from Bakeries are being observed in this research as the primary user group who have been conditioned to a certain method of product supply process for their Business. The Goal of my research was to observe the current problems and challenges that are being encountered between Bakeries and the customers they supply their products to.
• To figure out challenges in the supply process between bakeries and small to large businesses that deals confectionery products
• To figure out what retailers and general public that deals and consumes confectionery products consider before deciding to find bakeries that supply to their location.
I started with a research study that centered bakeries and small to large business owners that deals bakery products, i conducted a screener survey to determine potential participants that meet the requirement of the research study challenge, my target audience were Business Owners who are wholesalers and retailers, store owners, supermarkets, food eateries, and any sales outlet attendant that deals perishable foods and confectionery products from Bakeries. i was able to gather a list of 20 potential participants that meet the requirement on social media (Facebook), 10 among the participants are active business owners in the confectionery industry.
Un-moderated Qualitative research survey was conducted to figured out the challenges these aforementioned users go through while ensuring a reliable supply chain for their business, what they consider from bakeries before ordering for product supplies and the process at which they get it delivered for their customers.
Qualitative Research Question: As a retailer in confectionery business, What challenges do you come across when finding a Bakery to supply your business, before ordering for supplies and during delivery process.
Quantitative Survey Question: What do you consider the most important factor when making a decision to order from a food delivery app
Challenges
Looking in to the confectionery industry market, i conducted a competitive audit to verify if there has been any past implemented solutions and improvements that helps users overcome the current challenge that are attached to the supply process between bakeries and their customers. i.e if there has been any platform that digitally connects Bakeries to their customers on a wider scale in Nigeria. thanks to Google i found a large number of bakeries in my search result, that are being registered according to their location on Google map. My analysis discovered that only 10% of these Bakeries i found, happen to have a website landing page that displays their business information and contact information for supplying and delivering products according to their target location. But none of these bakeries had any improved solution that solves our main challenge in the confectionery industry.
However, there were two main indirect competitor that came into consideration as they seem to have a implemented a similar solutions that may also be useful to the confectionary industry problems and challenges, both were food apps that serve as a platform where a wide range of restaurants are registered and made availabe for people to order foods from any kind of restaurants nearby and have it delivered to their location.
Both of this app are serving as indirect competitors because they serve a food consumption niche (to deliver ready made food to the general public) although a very few numbers of bakeries are registered on the app to supply and deliver products to customers, but are not mainly focused on supplying products on a large scale to business retailers for reselling, instead they are serving a fast delivery for consumption.
Jumia foods is an online store that operate by gathering a list of food suppliers and restaurants to deliver their services through their platform, i would gauge them as a 50% direct competitor because they serve a large market from their mobile app and they have a broad list of food suppliers and restaurants, but they dont offer much service from bakery products except the ones i would say are linked with food restaurants.
● Using its visual design to communicate its company values
● Search optimization according to users preferred suppliers location
● Elegant designed with strong branding
● Serves a wide variety market to the public
● Broad range of options
● No means to contact bakery suppliers on order
process
● Not a memorable userflow
● doesnt offer bulk products supply from bakeries
● Add a quick means to contact suppliers before making a supply request.
● Provide a platform focused on a wide range of bakery suppliers from different location
● Add a quick order process and features to track orders.
● Provide an accessible mobile friendly application that remembers order history for recurring order
● doesn’t really major on bakeries delivery, focused on restaurants only
● Not a memorable user flow
● No detected feature of accessibility
Glovo food App is also a mobile App that operate by gathering a list of food suppliers and restaurants to deliver their services through their platform, i would guage them as a 50% indirect competitor because they serve a large market from their mobile app and they have a broad list of food restaurants, but they dont offer much service from bakery products except the ones i would say are linked with food restaurants as well.
● Using its visual design to communicate its company ethos
● Search optimization according to users preferred suppliers location
● Elegant designed with strong branding
● Serves a wide variety market to the public
● doesn’t offer bulk product supply from bakeries.
● Not a memorable user flow
● Less Feature of accessibility
● Add a quick means to contact suppliers before making a supply request.
● Provide a platform focused on a wide range of bakery suppliers from different location
● Add a quick order process and features to track orders.
● Provide an accessible mobile friendly application that remembers order history for recurring order
● No means to contact suppliers on order process
● Not a memorable user flow at first sight
● No feature of accessibility
There Happens to be very few Standard Bakeries in Nigeria currently using a website landing page platform to broadcast their business and are also registered on google. It turns out a large number of bakeries are yet to reach a wider range of their customers through a website or a mobile App, this influenced me to do more research as to why a large number of bakeries are yet to get in the online space.
Most Bakeries in Nigeria still practicing the old fashion way of manufacturing and supplying their products door to door manually for their customers.
Very few confectionary establishment are up to date as regarding the current trend of leveraging on technology as a means to reach and deliver to a wider range of customers (Website/ Mobile App)
Most Local Bakeries cant afford the cost of technology to promoting their business with a website or application
After conducting a competitive audit to find out current solutions that are already implemented in the confectionary industry, research showed both the indirect competitors are majorly focused on delivering ready made foods from restaurants for consumption, both operate throough mobile apps but are not focused on supplying and delivering products from the confectionary industry. this produced an opportunity to visualize a possible platform that would connect bakeries to business retailer and the general consumers in the most common and convenient way for the general public.
I selected 2 participant as the main representation of the aforementioned group of users to create personas and problem statements for each, in other to match their concerns and pain points with intended solution and also narrow down my design thinking for this challenge.
I created a user journey map to observe and identify the pain points and feelings Confectionery Retailers might experience while operating their traditional way of supply process from Bakeries in Nigeria. possible solutions and improvements we’re enlisted to counter the challenges that would be implemented through my designs.
Goal: For Users To find the nearest bakery and Order for supplies
There was a need for me to visually explore how confectionery business retailers currently undergo supply process with bakeries,and predict how the aforementioned users would experience the possible solutions and improvements through my design. i designed a storyboard to showcase how my selected persona would interact with my app design while fulfilling the needs and improvements for their business supply process.
A close up visuals display of how potential user will interact and make use of the implemented app designs to fulfill the improved supply process from the bakeries
Close Up Scenario Exercise
My user research and survey produced an indepth understanding of the pain points and challenges that are being encountered during the supply process between Bakeries and business retailers, after defining the users pain points, and common human factors that influenced possible solutions and improvements to Brainstorm ideas.
User struggle with making timely supply purchase from confectionary bakeries.
Users are conditioned to an unreliable supply chain (unable to choose preferred bakeries that supply according to the market demand)
Users cant track their supply orders and have to wait till the suppliers make delivery at their own routine, retail sellers are conditioned to wait hopelessly for a supplier bus that delivers products using a store to store delivery system, delivery of product ends at any stores they are able to reach within a geographical territory
Users cant keep a good history of their supply orders to meet the demands of their customers preference
After Understanding challenges and pain points of the general public and retail businesses in the confectionery industry with the subject user group of my research, possible solutions were brainstormed using the 5 Whys principles and Crazy 8 Exercise to put down a structured layout of my ideas and improved solutions.
Design a Mobile App that helps retail businesses, Bakeries and consumers connect faster on a wider scale by gathering a bulk list of Bakery suppliers according to their location as appeared on google maps
A digital platform that helps retail businesses and consumers easily locate Bakeries and confectionery suppliers to order products and delivery to their destination
Improving the supply process and distribution of products in the confectionery industry by leveraging on more advanced technology to help users save time and manage a reliable supply process.
An improved confectionery industry ecosystem where Bakeries are easily accessed for supplies and consumption, therefore increasing demands + relaible supply equals more sales and satisfaction.
A digital platform that helps retail businesses and consumers easily locate Bakeries and confectionery suppliers to order products and delivery to their destination
connecting a community of Bakery suppliers and retailers in the confectionery industry in the online space
After brainstorming possible improvements with the 5WHs principle, in order to narrow down my ideas down to the users problem, there was a need for me to justify my proposed solution with the range of human factors attached to their interaction with any products to influence my design solution.
Impatience:
certain % of Humans are known to have the impatient syndronme trait especially when i motion to get expected result this factor influenced my design thinking solution and brought about an insight. during the supply process between bakeries and customers who are retailers or consumers, the need to satisfy market demands comes as first priority there fore users want to have an easy way or satisfying their demand when ordering for confectionery products and tracking them to delivery
Limited Concentration:
users who are either business retailers or consumers will often find it hard to focus on a lot of stuff at a time in their business or daily life, therefore not juggling with a wide variety of suppliers and information manually, this factor influenced my design solution to create a platform that manages that instead, a Bakery supplying mobile app that does all the hard work and makes it less of a burden to keep to a fast reliable supply process by providing an option to save previous supply orders and information
Needing Analogy/Fears:
humans naturally are programmed to analyze whatever it is we encounter for us to solve a problem or overcome a task, there’s always a need of analogy or fear attached, when users who are business retailers or consumers, are deciding to make an order for supplies or consumption, this factor influenced possible thinking of a need to make available a well detailed information about the suppliers products and reputation and access to communicate with them during an order process before delivering their products.
Changed in Need
I understand Users needs have no limit. this include the consumers demand in the market. making available a platform that will serve as a host to a large numbers of bakeries according to each users location should solve this human factor problem.
Mobile Supply App is designed for Bakeries to quickly meet the demands of their customers from any preferred location, the app gathers a large market of Bakeries made available for small to large confectionery businesses to quickly find any suppliers of their choice, order bakery products, and track their order to delivery.
Card sorting is a type of testing where users are asked to organize cards together into groups in the most logical way in order to gain insight into how the user expect to carry out the desired task of the Bakery supplier mobile App, I arranged the cards according to themes discovered from prior research activities with research participants.
According to the UX Design process, there was a need for me to clearly visualize the steps and process of how my design ideas will be useful to improve and provide solution to the design challenge, this led me to create a user flow diagram; a shape diagram that shows a clear path a user will take in the Bakery suppliers Mobile App and to complete the desired task which is to find and request supplies from any Bakery based to their location and achieve desired outcome
Information architecture is all about organizing of technical information in a clear and logical way, such organization follows a straightforward purpose helping users navigate through it in order to achieve desired outcome. i designed a clear path to which users will go through, from onboarding to adding a business profile, finding suppliers, ordering products and tracking to delivery.
Crazy 8 is a core design sprint method, its a sketching exercise that challenge designers to sketch eight distint ideas in eight minutes. The goal was to push beyond the first ideas of my design solution, and to generate a wide variety of design solutions to the aforementioned challenge. I used the crazy 8 exercise to visually imprint my ideas of what the solution to the bakery suppliers app would look like for customers to be able to reach bakeries and order products in few clicks.
This screen serves as the main home screen as well as the Suppliers Dashboard which the user will navigate into as soon as they login, or register and fill their business information, this screen has useful features such as:
An automated list of suppliers generated according to the users perceived location and a visible call to action button to View suppliers and their products. ( with a complementary image)
A search button that lets the users search for their preferred bakeries in other location.
The screen has other common element such as the main menu options that enable users navigate the app to fulfill desired outcome which is scheduling a supply order and tracking orders to delivery.
This screen has a great features of helping the user gets an over view idea behind the first version of the Bakery suppliers Mobile App , it displays the Users dashboard, suppliers list, products and offers.
This prototypes screen displays a simple user flow from the suppliers dashboard to viewing suppliers profile and products (also adding product to checkout cart).
Low fidelity prototype that shows how users navigate from the home screen, selecting a supplier, checking out their information before ordering products and proceeding to checkout
This prototype displays a simple user flow right from the display on boarding screen of the app to login in or registering and filling up business information of the user to getting into the suppliers panel and selecting the preferred suppliers profile and products, selecting the type of product and amount they want to order and saving the order history to enable them track it later and then back to the suppliers home panel.
[This is a link to the Low fidelity prototype for the sales bakery suppliers app
To understand how users will interact with the first version of the Bakery supplier mobile app lofi prototype, i conducted an online usablity studies, and gathered feedback using google forms to perform an online survey with about 10 participants, the type of study was an unmoderated study, We needed to find out if the main user experience is easy for users; which is finding a supplier, ordering and tracking products till delivery, from a bakery that supplies based on the users location.
Users need to easily access the search filter feature to search bakeries near them
Users need to be able to edit order preview according to their choice, selecting date, time and payment method
Users need to be able to check suppliers profile and their reviews before selecting their products towards checkout and also an easy check out process
Users need to be able to contact suppliers right after making an order so as to finalize the delivery process
Early designs of the low fidelity prototype came with quite a few customization, majority of the participant needed detailed explanation on what kind of element were being displayed and what uses they serve, i still managed to get needed feedbacks that contributed to improving and initiating my high fidelity designs.
Early designs of the low fidelity prototype came a modal box search filter with limited options for users to search bakeries nearby and the types of product they supply, after conducting usability studies high fidelity designs came with a more option according to the users preference, the search filter screen came with a slider that indicates the range at which the search brings up results, users can slide to find bakeries in the whole city or just nearby their area. the search filter screen also include options in chips button to search for bakeries by top ratings, popular and delivery fee, user also get to choose to search bakeries depending on the kind of product theyre looking for which could be bread, Cake or Pastries.
This part of the screen represents the preview order screen which helps users review their order and also displays the delivery time for the products, delivery address and contact information with an option to edit (i.e to change delivery address and contact information), right below is an option with a toggle button to save order history, this appears as one of the key options that helps users save an order for recurring purpose, users dont have to go through replanning the same kind of order in a recurring case.
right after the save order history is the final button that helps the user proceeds to continue to checkout.
The Second screen represents the confirmation screen that an order has been placed successfully, a delivery information to alert the user to be ready to recieve the products, and also an action button that helps users proceed to tracking their order and get a live result of the bakeries delivery process.
After getting feedback from my usability study improvement were made to the preview order screen, for users to have the option to choose the delivery date they’re expecting the products,
1. A scrolling date picker feature to select the delivery date for users.
2. i adjusted the (change delivery address) button, an option to change the payment methods
3. A clickable (pay on delivery button). (save order history) toggle button
Improvements were also made to the confirmation message, instead of having it on a separate page, i thought of making it display as a modal info box right in the middle of the preview button screen, the modal box include a order successfully submitted information and a button to proceed to Tracking order or continue shopping.
[This is a link to the High fidelity Design prototype for the bakery suppliers mobile app
Adding Alt text for images for users who are vision impaired, and readable text and buttons
Used icons to help users navigate easier
Used detailed imagery to help users unserstand designs element and functions
The Bakery Supplier App helps users feel more connected and to a wide range of bakeries enough options to explore for everyone, A reliable supply chain that meets every retail business needs and consumption.
I learned a great deal in during the design process of the bakery suppliers app, bridging the gap between retail businesses that deals confectionary products for consumption and Bakeries that supplies their products, Making proper research cleared my assumption and biases regarding the supply process in the confectionary industry and an opportunity to propose an improvement that can be established with my designs.
Conduct another round of usability studies to validate whether users pain points have been effectively met
Conduct more user research to determine any new areas of improvement and needs
Thank you for reviewing my Case Study on the Bakery Supplier Mobile App Project, if you’d like to see more of my work, connect with me or work with me, find me on social medial and my contact information below.
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