Case Study
Morrisons Store Mobile App
Fresh Code Check
Overview
Morrisons Store Mobile App is a project that I have been working on for the last year or so. Store Mobile App (or SMA as we call it) is used by Store Colleagues within Morrisons stores to complete day-to-day tasks. Most of which are processes to update, correct and manage stock.
All though there are many projects within SMA itself, 9 of which I have either designed or helped to design. It is for the most part, one big project. This of course has its benefits, but also comes with its own challenges, particularly when it comes to the physical design of the applications. In these case studies I look to cover how I have handled creating user centred and process driven designing. What problems have they solved and what benefits they provide not only to the business but also to the users of the applications.
Fresh Code Checking
By far the most complicated project I have worked on. Combining an existing paper based process (very messy and confusing) as well as considering legal issues that could be faced if the process wasn’t robust.
So… what is it? Fresh Code Checking is the process by which Morrisons check the date codes and rotate stock across the fresh areas of the stores.
Problem
Currently food items are not being marked down, wasted or code rotated correctly. There is no systematic provision that tracks and alerts users to products that are close to expiring. Creating the issue of products that are either close to expiring or exceed their expiry date are being left on sale to customers and therefore Morrisons is not complying with their legal obligations within stores.
Secondly, Colleagues are unable to check all fresh food products everyday, leading to inconsistency and ultimately an increase in cost, time and effort for the company.
Goals
Speed up and simplify the process to reduce wasted effort from the store process.
Provide our customers with good quality, in-date food, through improved compliance
Give central visibility of all relevant data to allow informed business decisions and reduce risk of prosecution.
Give us further due diligence to show local authorities that we have robust systems and routines in place to split out long life and short life products.
Our Proposal
To automate the current process to allow colleagues to capture short coded products and perform the appropriate actions via the mobile device and an electronic logbook. This will allow us to speed up and simplify the process without the need for substantial and time-consuming paperwork.
Research
What we found from colleagues:
Paper log book, goes missing a lot
Backdating… one log book a month = a lot of log books/ a lot of paperwork to look through if needed legally or otherwise
Can often be hard to read handwriting
Very time consuming
Inconsistent, a lot of products can get missed
If colleagues have breaks/ distractions whilst completing it, they miss things from where they left off
Based on this initial research I needed to understand what exactly is in place for this process at the moment. This helped me to identify the core functionality that we needed within the app, and gave some ideas as to how I could make the process clearer and less time consuming for the colleagues.
From the log book, I found 6 key areas existing within the process:
Reduction Bay Checks - These are areas of the store where reduced items are kept and are to be checked daily. The colleague would provide details of the products they've found.
Long-life and Short-life checks - these 2 areas have departments that need to be checked for ‘today’
Poor rotation - Colleague documents any areas where they find products that have been rotated poorly
Fresh Manager Check - Departments listed to check, signed with initials an no of issues found
Escalation & Next Steps - Further documentation of any issues found, eg what product, issue and then accountability, how did the issue come about and what has been done about it.
Design Principles
Once the research had been done, we came up with a set of process and design principles to include while designing. We wanted to keep the process familiar to the user (refer to the key areas above), whilst making the process simple for the user and capturing more in-detail and robust data.
Seamless integration - This process needs to fit within the ops clock for store process and will integrate into the colleagues daily routine/ schedule.
Simplify & Structure - This process needs to be simple to use so users don’t have to learn a completely new pattern, however needs to have a solid structure in order for the process to be completed effectively and efficiently.
Wire-framing
Design Critic
Escalation process
Escalations are part of the process whereby fresh managers have identified an issue within a department or with a specific product. This needs to be documented as to what the issue was, and what has been done to correct it and stop it happening again.
Rotation rating
This was a feature used in the app for areas of the store where poor rotation was identified. Originally we implemented a 5 star rating system, however this became too complicated as there were too many options for the user. As this is generally opinion based, we wanted the user to have to make a decision, was the rotation done poorly, averagely or good? This simplifies the process and helps the fresh managers identify where the problems lie.
Check timing
We wanted to set specific timings for each part of the process to be completed. However this seemed to over complicate the process and because of the potential legal issues for the process not being completed we removed these to allow the users to complete each section throughout the day. Allowing central users viewing the app reports to identify any compliance issues for example, if it took the colleague 8 hours to complete their checks for the day.
Adding store walk (Aisles)
As a way of making the process efficient for the user we came up with a simple solution. Give the colleague an order to complete the checks. This was broken down into aisles, within each aisle were departments that needed to be checked. This meant that we could save the colleague time as they complete the process in a logical order and also solved the problem of departments that are in multiple locations throughout the store. Preventing the colleague going from one side of the store to the other to complete one department. They would simply complete each department based on the aisle they are in.