Deliverables

Duration

Role

Team/client

Redesigned user experience and user interface of the app

2 months
February - April 2021

UI/UX Designer

Individual Project, Guided by Pankaj Upadhyay, DOD IIT Guwahati

This is a redesign project done as the semester thesis project for my fourth semester at IIT Guwahati. Its project brief was to select a lacking product and redesign it with a better user experience and ease of understanding.

Understanding

What is Zoho Inventory?

Zoho inventory is the mobile standalone app of the popular web app of the same name. This app aims to bring all the inventory and billing features of the web app to your phone.

What is the goal of this project?

The goal of this project is to redesign the Zoho Inventory Mobile app to make it more user friendly and self sufficient enough to go toe to toe with the biggest apps in the mobile inventory industry.

Process

Here is the process I adopted for the project

Literature Analysis

Comparing the web app and mobile app. Also looking at the status of the competition.

Comparing Web App and Mobile App

Statistics of Competitors

User review analysis

Analysing user reviews on playstore

After going through 100+ reviews with less than 3 stars, the most repeated problems and requested features were mapped

Usability Audit

Finding out problems at specific stages in the app

No past transactions or sales activity actually present on the main dashboard

Only sales order and new item can be added, cannot be viewed on app even if added from web app

Very flat color scheme with no visible indicators throughout the app showing very poor cognitive walk-through

Can view and edit contacts, but cannot add any. No actual separation in contacts as buyer and supplier

Only the order can be generated. For the actual invoice, a request can be sent and on the web app it can be generated.

Various technical errors

Competitor analysis using SWOT Analysis

Comparing the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats of competitors analyzed

Strengths

Weakness

Very popular web app available with high number of users already present.
Completely cloud based.
Files can be accessed anywhere

Facing competition from several established brands
Lacking several basic features
Various technical issues
Cannot function as a standalone app
Web app itself has a steep learning curve

Extremely large community of users available on the get go
Seamlessly integrate the web app and the mobile app on one common already available cloud infrastructure
Enabling basic features will make it a good enough contender

Strong competition from apps of this segment
Various negative reviews and pre conceived notion about the app needs to change , which is difficult

Oppurtunities

Threats

Focus Group Result Analysis

A focus group consisting of 5 members was conducted. Each of the five members were either a small business owner or a small scale manufacturer. They were selected to aid with the target user group.

Chief insights from focus group

The app was a very basic companion to the zoho inventory web app.

Basic features like invoice generation, item creation and maintanence are absent.

Even with the apps minimum features, very less visual indicators were available to guide to the next step

Essential features like delivery challan and expense recording are absent.

As a standalone app its almost unusable in most use cases.

Essential features like delivery challan and expense recording are absent.

No battery saving options like dark mode available

Payment tracking along with online sale tracking missing.

Dashboard too focussed on sale orders only. No information on payments and inventory available on it.

User Persona

Using the research gathered and target audience identified, an user persona is made

Insight requirement ranking using KANO Analysis

Combining all the feature requests and changes which were identified through research an extensive list of features of the app was arrived upon. The features are now sorted with the help of KANO model according to its importance. As the time is limited, this helps in finding the most important features to be devoloped in the app.

Redesigned and updated task flow

The entire task flow for the app is rethought out and the wireframes are added to the neccessary points in the task flow.

Wireframes

Wireframes were created for the design

Assets

Assets used in the design

High Fidelity Screens

The final UI for the app

Onboarding

A simple splash screen depicting the Zoho logo along with the inventory naming. It gives time for the essentials to load.

Providing users with the option for multiple languages

Similar login screen to the original. Added Login with google to enable fast access.

1. The user enters their mobile number. Button disabled because number not entered
2. The user enters the OTP received to validate their identity.
3. Only the basic information which is required for the app to function is received from the user.

Dashboard

Inventory

Highly searchable and sortable inventory. Major filter categories are available and the list can be sorted too.

To add an item to the inventory, you are provided with various customization options. Add a picture, item name, sale price, cost price, GST details on the pricing side, and on the stock side add opening stock, item code and set low stock warning.

Parties

The parties are categorized as “buyer” and “seller”. The arrow near the values shows the amount of money we owe or the amount they owe us.

Opening a party allows you to look at their past transactions and also their contact details. We can also directly create an invoice or any other transaction for the particular party directly from here.

Creating a party is very similar to creating an item. For screens view in interactive prototype

Zoho Inventory App