Our goal was to discover how we could build a product that helps entrepreneurs and small businesses. We brainstormed problem areas to look into, and after much research, we discovered that businesses face large losses in revenue and time when dealing with logistics. This is something the team was especially passionate and eager to learn more about and design a solution for because we've all dealt with some form of tedious retail or sales inventory tasks.
Our generative research showed us that entrepreneurs, small businesses, large businesses, analysts, and many other roles and titles, have common responsibilities and challenges in dealing with business management and data analysis. These roles share a common challenge: being required to perform various responsibilities and have a wide set of skills. Customer relations, market research, manual inventory labor, and manual data input and cleaning were among some of the general responsibilities and skills needed. Our team saw an opportunity in reducing the tedious labor that goes into accomplishing these tasks.
To provide a solution for individuals like Manager Michael, we decided that streamlining data management and analysis while increasing modeling accuracy was our largest priority. However, we were only given three weeks for product development, so we had to develop a development strategy that prioritized features most impactful for users. We focused on developing a dynamic dashboard, modeling features, streamlining capabilities, and inventory management.
The biggest challenge we faced was creating a scannable and simple interface that provides users with key points and necessary tools for effective and efficient data management and analysis. We had to experiment with white space, different layouts, and different iconography. These changes were successful improvements, but we foresee further changes to maintain an accessible and scannable interface while integrating more developments.
In future developments, we hope to conduct another round of usability tests on our latest prototype iteration to discover areas of improvement on our product in its first stage. To take the product to the next stage, we hope to make improvements on the current product, flush out features like dashboard templates and customizations, and start development for features that weren't prioritized in our first three-week cycle.