VR
VR Group, a service provider operating in Finland and Sweden, specializes in the travel and logistics sectors. The company manages freight and passenger rail traffic and has a workforce of approximately 6,300 individuals. VR Group’s annual net sales reach approximately one billion euros.
Client
VR Group
Service
Product Design
Industry
Travel
Date
01.02.2022 - Current
Executive Summary
Challenge
The Inventory system is one of the most business critical systems within VR, as among other things – it handles the place data for the sales system. Any sales that happens in VR needs to use Inventory to specify which places and allotments they are able to sell to begin with. The system is also used for planning upcoming trains and setting them up sales-ready. The environment consists of a backend system and a frontend for distribution planners and operational users to make changes to published trains and which templates the wagons utilize.
Role
Robert was onboarded to the project to initiate the renewal of the system’s front-end. His initial primary responsibilities included leading the design work, innovating creative solutions, validating them with users and the development team, and ensuring alignment and agreement among all primary stakeholders: users, business, and development team. The deliverables were fully-fledged Figma prototypes that had been meticulously crafted and finalized.
Process
Outcome
Robert conducted a usability evaluation of the outdated front-end application to identify usability issues. Approximately 30 usability issues were identified, varying in severity.
Following the usability evaluation, Robert presented the findings to the primary users and conducted interviews to scope the most significant pain points of the current system. This information was used to initiate design work by dividing the front-end application into smaller epics based on identified user journeys.
UX Design
UX design work was closely collaborated with both users and developers. Transparency and a collaborative decision-making process were employed to iterate and find solutions that satisfied technical constraints and real-world processes.
It became evident that the existing Design System and developed components were not suitable for the nature of the system. Inventory required efficient and compact components, but the available components were primarily focused on sparsity and accessibility. Therefore, Robert engaged in discussions with horizontal teams to explore the possibility of collaboration. He facilitated workshops to develop a mission statement for internal applications, which served as a guiding principle for UI design and component development. This mission statement was used as a launching platform to initiate discussions about a secondary Design System that could be utilized in internal projects.
Image: Picture of Train-page
Service Design
Early in the project, it became apparent that the processes used in the system were outdated and did not align with current real-world processes. Consequently, the project scope was expanded beyond a purely UX focus to incorporate aspects of Service Design. This expansion emphasized the processes surrounding the system. Through this work, Robert established contact with a new user group that had never been involved in the development cycle.
Image: Workshop results
Image: Lander-page
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