Transferring items between budgets
⚠️ This project is under a Non-Disclosure Agreement. The prototypes presented are a simplified version of the final solution.
Lead Product Designer responsible for Research, User interviews, Wireframes, and Prototypes.
Silicon Valley company developing tech products globally.
Axure, Keynote.
The product is an internal desktop web application tool to help financial analysts, managers and specialists to plan, approve, and track expenses of the manufacturing process of their products.
To calculate the production cost of a product, financial managers create budgets in the app with a detailed list of items needed in the manufacturing process. Each item can have up to 29 specifications, such as description, vendor, quantity, and price. Hence, this process can be time-consuming to be as accurate as possible.
Image: Example of a simplifyed budget page with the list of items and its specifications.
In a survey held annually to collect feedback and spot potential new features, many users requested a way to transfer budget items across budgets. The users that requested this feature were Managers and Specialists responsible for budget creation e detailing. The next step was to understand the motivation and details behind the request.
Understanding problems by interviewing users, stakeholders and specialists.
Debriefing the findings with the team to understand possible solutions and constraints to define the scope.
Prototyping solutions to test and validate with users, stakeholders and the team.
Handoff of refined prototypes, specs and any supporting documentation to support features' implementation and testing
I did follow-up interviews with Managers and Specialists that requested the feature to confirm and further understand their needs. Users stated that some items -already added to a budget- might not be used in the version of the product the budget is targeting. Since item creation can be time-consuming, they requested a way to transfer it to future budgets when necessary.
Depending on the moment, items in a budget might not only be filled with detailed financial data but also have comments, attachments, and other associated data that could get lost or impacted during the transaction.
Another important constraint is that users can purchase items during the planning process. To do so, an amount equivalent to the items' cost must be previously approved in the budget. Therefore, to transfer items purchased, the corresponding approved amount must also be transferred (deducting it from the source budget and added to the destination budget).
My main challenge was to map all scenarios of impacts and document decisions for future implementation and testing.I worked with QAs and Developers to map the constraints and present the discovery visually to validate with stakeholders and the team.
Image: Example of the documentation presented to show a scenario of impact on budgets.
The final result was a modal that guided users through two steps: First, the selection of the destination budget. Second, the item's impact summary on both budgets. The page also shows the list of items selected to be transferred, with any warnings or errors related to the constraints defined previously.
Along with the high-fidelity prototypes, the final handoff included a list of all constraints and their corresponding treatments (error, warning and info messages) and example files with the different scenarios to support further QA testing.
My biggest challenge during this project was to understand the product's rules and constraints. To do so, I had to constantly communicate with engineers and stakeholders to confirm and align existing rules with new decisions. Being able to act as a facilitator and organize information visually in a clear way was critical for this project.