1. Stakeholder interviews and business requirements

Avasam's users were split into 2 categories: sellers and suppliers; each category had it's own modules and required different approaches. That's where the user research was needed: to figure out each goal, challenge and pain-point.

2. Initial user research

Avasam's users were split into 2 categories: sellers and suppliers; each category had it's own modules and required different approaches. That's where the user research was needed: to figure out each goal, challenge and pain-point.

3. Field studies

Avasam wanted to solve all the seller's process issues (except marketing the products). For this, I needed to take a deep dive into analyzing the seller's process and tasks.

The primary aim of the filed studies was to map out the process and understand fully what actions the sellers take in order to achieve their goal (to sell products through drop shipping).

Seller process analysis:

User journey maps

Specific task analysis - order management (seller)

I used task analysis and process study for each step identified apart from promoting offering - where Avasam wasn't solving this (creating a sales channel, finding a supplier, securing an offering, listing products on sales channels)

4. Information architecture

The platform was complex and required me to group all functionalities in modules. Once the modules were mapped out according to the connection between them and taking into account the operations performed by the users, I moved onto Information Architecture.

The result aimed on this step was to map out the hierarchy of each module in terms of operations (ie. the workspace).

5. Product design, wireframes

We went AGILE, formed the teams (back-end, front-end and design) and started the process of creating the MVP:

The result aimed on this step was to create a working MVP.

6. UX Design, UI design and prototypes for usability testing

When working on the design for each module, I heavily infused Nielsen's heuristics in the user experience, so we could minimize as much as possible the need for customer support and avoid errors the users might make.
System visibility and error prevention were the top 2 heuristics, since the most painful processes (like the returns module) were the most obscure ones because they involved communication from 2 very busy parties (the supplier and the seller).

This is where I used workflow analysis to figure out how to eliminate obscurity in the processes.

Initially, I performed at least 2 rounds of usability testing for each module and even though the process was lengthy, the modules' UX came out solid enough to convince at least 5 investors to commit to this project.  

7. Documentation and support for the developers

I created over 200 wireframes, lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes with more than 300 pages of documentation for UI/UX and oversaw the implementation process