CFA Inventory Scanner

Building a scanner app to help Chick-Fil-A restaurant staff track inventory.

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Business Problem

CFA branches faced challenges in manually receiving inventory into restaurants. To improve transparency, they wanted to adopt a digital tracking system without disrupting existing procedures. The goal was to enable digital logging of inventory at the point of intake.

My Role

As the sole UX designer, I collaborated with an Engineering Lead, Product Owner, Front End Developer, and 4 Backend Engineers. My responsibilities included strategy development, user research, workshop facilitation, feature design, and prototyping.

Timeline

The first production-ready version of the app was completed in 2 months. We worked in agile sprints, and I designed new flows parallel to our developments team's implementation.

01

Background

CFA aimed to enhance inventory visibility at their 3,000+ nationwide locations. I joined an ongoing project to transform their inventory scanning app from a proof-of-concept to a "pilot-ready" version.

02

Research

To understand the current state and future needs, I conducted user and stakeholder interviews and a field study. The goal was to comprehend how Chick-fil-A team members performed inventory intake and identify challenges and benefits.

Methodology:

User Interviews - I talked directly to team members at active Chick-Fil-A branches to understand how they performed intake before the scanner app.
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Stakeholder Interviews - I talked to people involved in the project who could speak to the business priorities.
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Field Study - I shadowed backroom staff members to understand how they worked and the challenges and benefits the scanner app could introduce intro their day-to-day routines.

Example of an inventory intake journey

03

Challenges

Research revealed pain points in the app's current version. I addressed issues in iterations, focusing on:

I. Login Flow

I addressed unnecessary location selection steps by using the previous location as a smart default. Users could then change location in the less likely event they moved to another branch location.
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I learned that the session timeouts were due to the framework upon which the app was initially built. I communicated the importance of eliminating this friction and we moved to native app infrastructure which solved the issue.

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Inventory Scanner Login Flow - Before

Inventory Scanner Login Flow - After

II. Scan Screen

I simplified the screen to reduce cognitive load, prioritizing essential elements. The main change was encouraging the removal of an input field which was out of place in the "auto" scan mode. It was present because of a limitation of the original app framework. Our move to a native app made it possible to remove it.

I redesigned UI style and removed unnecessary elements, improving usability. I built a style library in Figma which housed our app components. This made the process easier to implement new design, keep components to a minimum, and it gave the app a more appealing look and feel.‍

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Scan Screen: Before (left) and After (right)

04

Final Product

After internal testing and iteration, I presented a clickable prototype to the stakeholder team in 2019. The prototype, showcased on a Zebra TC-52 device, was a success, providing a real feel for the app and gaining executive support.

Inventory Scanner - Final Screens

05

Results

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic delaying the large-scale pilot in early 2020, the improved app showed a 45% decrease in scanning time during field testing.

The project's success opened the door for our team to introduce numerous additional features which were approved and implemented.

Other projects:

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CFA Inventory Scanner

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