Taking logistics to new digital frontiers

Building a product centered around customer experience starts with talking to customers. Our teams partnered with stakeholders to radically change how they were doing user research. Instead of just surveys, we developed a lightweight program of regular customer interviews, usability testing, and contextual inquiry. This new cadence connected research directly to product development, allowing our teams to immediately take action on insights.

Digital transformation often means trying new things and doing it quickly, which can be challenging for a risk-averse workforce. It was clear that we needed to implement design and development practices that allowed for quickly prototyping new patterns and ways of working while simultaneously improving and refining the design elements that didn’t work.

In the long run, imparting new and more effective methodologies is better than just stepping in to solve the immediate problems. With this in mind, we built relationships within the business and IT teams in order to create structure for widespread involvement. We approached change from the bottom up, involving stakeholders directly in user research and experience design work to internalize more customer-centered ways of working.

With close user involvement, digital products are more likely to meet users’ expectations and requirements. Instead of working for years off of assumptions, we implemented a cadence of rapid research, design, prototyping, and testing new ideas with customers. Our team documented and outlined processes that worked and created The User-Centered Design Center of Competence to serve as a local hub for innovation. By involving business and IT divisions throughout the process, they became greater advocates for the customer, often seeking out customer feedback for shaping product development decisions.