23-03-21 Entry: Screens Walkthrough #1 for WPOC

Derrick Loo 🦎💻🚢 -

We conducted our 1st workflow walkthrough of the Figma screens with our client W today, and it was pretty fruitful.

We confirmed many of our presumptions (we were about 95+% correct), got new insights and uncovered new outcomes:

  1. More fields are required for the bunkering post-ops section (essential for reporting);
  2. More than 1 parcel can be assigned to Owner (crucial for reporting);
  3. Users need to know the sequence of all the ops; not only bunkering (important for ops people);
  4. The formula for calculating variance, which is the difference between what was exepected and what was actually used, is different from other clients (also crucial for reporting);

Had we not planned for the workflow walkthrough this early into the project, all the above would be impossible to be discovered unti much later.

The initial plan was to show client W the 1st working software 2 months after kickoff, followed by 1 month of UAT, bug-fixing before going live.

Time is of essence to make sure we ship the right stuff and ship it right.

This was something I learnt from my ScrumMaster course and Jim Spool's UX workshop, and it was acutally the first time I ever kicked off a new project where I could be both involved in the design and project management.

After the video call, our team quickly had a chat and refine the ERD while I revised the screens to reflect the changes.

Owner can have multiple parcels now.
4 timings to capture for each parcel now (2 previously).

The tricky one was the sequencing of the ops, which we assumed to be of no importance for the client.

Any of the 4 operation types could commence first, but usually it would be the bunkering. The clients need to access it easily at the job list page, and define the sequence at the job details page.

I came up with 3 options for the initial design:

Option 1: Arrows visible by default to move each ops up and down.
Option 2: Arrows visible only at mouse enter.
Option 3: Visible drag icons for users to drag up or down.

I personally go for option 3 because it requires less mouse clicks:

E.g. in order to bring Bunkering ops down to sequence #4, for option 3, I will click & hold once, drag it down and release; for option 1 and 2, Iwill need 3 clicks. And it's not too complex comparatively to code with current web technologies.

Next task I'm focusing on tomorrow will be the sequence display at the job list table.

The other outcome I hope to achieve is how the users can update the status of each ops easily at the table, without the need to open up the job details page to do so.

It is a bloody good challenge!