Overview

A trading platform-like app aimed to help companies source materials at low cost to make high profit margins on finished goods.

Problem Space

Our existing client needed a solution in R&D and manufacturing operations for Cost Engineers & Sourcing Managers to make high profit margins in sourcing materials required to manufacture a finished product.

Solution

I introduced design features and redefined flows typically found in consumer facing applications to reduce the learning curve and increase time spent creating business value.

Role

UX Design (Lead)

Design Team

UX Design, Product Managers, Engineering Team

Methods

Proto personas, Jobs To Be Done, Heuristic Evaluation, Journey Mapping, Iterative Prototyping

Duration

1 year

Features
Features

Support cost decisions effectively

Cost Analytics provides a suite a tools that equips stakeholders to identify trends, stay up to date with markets and plan for a variety of scenarios, facilitating organisations to make bold and calculated decisions.

Identify market trends

Source resources cost effectively with the highlighted market trends and maximise margins.

Stay up to date with Alerts

Setup alerts to stay up to date and get notified of fluctuations in market indices.

Plan for adversity

Prepare for unforeseen scenarios by exploring and visualising variations in cost models with What-if modelling.

Monitor with an AI-powered dashboard

Monitor everything important, and receive and AI powered overview of the most consequential fluctuations.
Business Impact

16%

Improvement in likability scores

Improvement in likability scores

500+

New cost models created within 2 weeks of launch

New cost models created within 2 weeks of launch

Increased product stickiness

Increased product stickiness

How Did I get this?
Collaboration process
Problem
why current
flow needs rework

Design is about maximising the constraints present. There were four areas I needed to leverage to deliver solid and user-centric solutions. While I could reliably call upon my design expertise, and had clarity about the business requirement, I lacked domain expertise in supply chain management, and had to adapt to technical limitations as and when the tech team brought them up.

Design is about maximising the constraints present. There were four areas I needed to leverage to deliver solid and user-centric solutions. While I could reliably call upon my design expertise, and had clarity about the business requirement, I lacked domain expertise in supply chain management, and had to adapt to technical limitations as and when the tech team brought them up.

Understanding who we were designing for and what they required was akin to piecing a puzzle together. Each piece that fit gave more information about how the other pieces interact with each other. The puzzle did get pieced together, so let's take a closer look at the idiosyncrasies in the world of supply chain management.

Problem Statement

How can we enable Cost Engineers to effectively support various Category Managers in their decision making processes?

What did the Cost Engineers need?

1. Vendor Negotiation Tools

A more integrated approach was necessary when considering further development of vendor negotiations that enabled comprehensive preparation.

2. Market Trends Alert

More robust and omni-present market trends notification system was required to enable cost engineers to take proactive decisions.

3. Contingency Planning

Cost Engineers needed more versatile tools to seek out and plan for unforeseen contingencies.

4. Improved monitoring and alignment

Cost engineers needed a solution to monitor the most important cost sensitive factors and help other internal stakeholders stay aligned with the financial direction

"I want to be able to further anticipate potential changes in market conditions and visualise the impact on my expected costs. This will allow me to stay prepared in case of any unexpected developments and effectively negotiate with the supplier for favourable cost outcomes."

How did it come together?

Once we realised that the various features of the product were independent of each other, enabling the stakeholders to achieve different goals, much like a variety of tools for different tasks, the to-do list started getting chalked off with incredible pace.

Business Need

How can we enable Cost Engineers to effectively support various Category Managers in their decision making processes?

Why were they finding it difficult to do so currently?

To understand this, I broke down the problems they were facing with the existing interface.

In light of these challenges, there were three major changes we needed to make.

#1
The steps needed to create the scenarios needed to be chunked, with actions possible clearly stated.

#2
There was a need to allow for a more intuitive manipulation of the values within the conditions.

#3
Current values, changed conditional values needed visualization for easier interpretation. We also realized there was the possibility to present historical values for additional comparison, enabling comprehensive decision making.


Addressing the challenges
Outcomes
and Reflections
01
01

I chunked the different activities - first only letting the user select the elements they want to play with.The steps required were also clearly mentioned using a stepper component. The buttons also indicated which step the user would proceed to, keeping the user informed about system status.

02
02

The Playground utilised simple to understand tools to manipulate the values - a slider for finite values and an input field for infinite values.

03
03

We worked with the tech and product teams to ensure that manipulating the values results in immediately viewable changes.

This process was repeated for each of the five product features we designed.

Understand user goals through the jobs to be done

Identify why the current product makes it challenging to achieve the goals

Refer to competitors and other analogous solutions to mitigate the challenges

Verify the validity of usability of the design with domain experts

Results
  • On-time launch of cost analytics app led to customer satisfaction

  • Successful UX intern onboarding and mentorship led to fun collaborations, knowledge exchanges and learnings. This resulted in to an extension of intern’s contract (+6 months) to further UX support for the application

For full case study, please reach out to- shrotri.savani@gmail.com

Are you a design geek, a movie buff, or a foodie who likes trying out new cuisines? If yay, do get in touch. ✨

Designed and built by Savani. 🙋🏻‍♀️© 2025

Are you a design geek, a movie buff, or a foodie who likes trying out new cuisines? If yay, do get in touch. ✨

Designed and built by Savani. 🙋🏻‍♀️© 2025

Are you a design geek, a movie buff, or a foodie who likes trying out new cuisines? If yay, do get in touch. ✨

Designed and built by Savani. 🙋🏻‍♀️© 2025