Inventory Workflow Redesign for Faster Vehicle Turnaround

Simplified complex inventory tasks with a timeline-based approach improving operational efficiency by 80% and boosting user satisfaction.

Hero image of redesigned inventory timeline UI

Project Overview

Company :

Arivo Acceptance

Role :

Product Designer

Team :

Ops, PM, Engineering, QA

Tools :

Figma, Lucidchart, Slack, Jira, Hey Marvin

Redesigned an internal operations tool to streamline repossessed vehicle inventory tracking. The legacy system lacked task ownership and visibility, causing delays in auction readiness. I led the design of a timeline-based interface that mirrored real workflows, clarified next steps, and reduced reliance on external coordination tools.

🚗 30% Reduction in Vehicle Turnaround Time
✅ 90% Task Completion Without External Help
📉 50% Decrease in External Tool Usage

❗ Problem Statement

The legacy inventory tool used by the operations team lacked a clear structure, real-time visibility, and accountability tracking. Staff struggled to understand vehicle status, identify who was responsible for delays, or know the next step leading to frequent handoffs via google chat and spreadsheet based workarounds.

As a result, auction readiness was frequently delayed, team coordination was inconsistent, and task ownership was ambiguous hindering both operational efficiency and user trust in the system.

🔍 Project Context

  • Users: Internal operations team managing vehicles from repossession to sale.
  • Scope: Redesign of internal web-based inventory tracker with backend integration.
  • Team: Ops lead, QA, engineering, product; I led UX and interaction design.
  • Constraints: Must work within the company’s existing backend tech stack and ship in under 3 months.
  • Challenge: Aligning multiple department needs while minimizing disruption to live workflows.

🎯 Project Goals

The goal was to streamline our internal vehicle inventory process by addressing key workflow gaps and improving user clarity through human-centered design.

🎯 Key Objectives

  • Improve Workflow Transparency: Build a visual timeline to clearly reflect each vehicle’s progress.
  • Clarify Task Ownership: Highlight responsible teams for each workflow step to reduce confusion.
  • Enhance Delay Identification: Surface blockers in real-time to avoid auction listing delays.
  • Integrate Document Access: Make title and repo docs accessible directly in the system UI.
  • Optimize Filtering and Search: Help users locate vehicles faster using smart filters like auction date.
  • Reduce External Tool Dependence: Minimize Google chat and spreadsheet usage by consolidating workflow context.

📐 Success Metrics

  • Task Completion Rate: 90% unaided task success across key actions.
  • User Satisfaction Score: 25% increase post-redesign in user feedback ratings.
  • Tool Dependency Drop: 50% fewer mentions of external tools in workflows.
  • Processing Time: 30% reduction from repo to auction readiness.

My approach

Redesigning a legacy internal tool required deep understanding of user needs and existing workflows. I collaborated closely with operations leads, engineers, and QA to co-create a solution that was intuitive, scalable, and minimized friction for day-to-day inventory tasks.

Step 1: Internal User Research & Workflow Analysis

Conducted shadowing sessions and interviews with operations team members. Mapped out the current inventory management flow and identified repetitive tasks, points of confusion, and cross-department bottlenecks.

Step 2: Pain Point Synthesis & Opportunity Framing

Clustered findings into themes such as: “Unclear task ownership,” “Too many disconnected steps,” and “Lack of visibility.” These themes informed our UX opportunities and product scope.

Step 3: Concept Exploration & Timeline Model

Prototyped multiple layout models, eventually moving toward a timeline-based UI. This structure aligned with how users mentally tracked status updates, deadlines, and action items across teams.

Step 4: Final Design & Validation

Created high-fidelity prototypes and tested with a diverse mix of users. Adjusted information hierarchy, form field order, and visual clarity based on real-world feedback.

Step 5: Dev Handoff & QA Support

Provided annotated Figma files, state diagrams, and QA checklists. Supported development with responsive specs and async handoff meetings to ensure clean implementation.

Step 1: Internal User Research & Workflow Analysis

🔍 User Research Scorecard – Pre-Redesign Workflow Analysis

Observation Area Participant 1 Participant 2 Participant 3 Participant 4 Participant 5 Key Themes
Identify vehicle status on the timeline ✅ 🟡 ❌ 🟡 🟡 Lack of real-time visibility
Find who’s responsible for the current step 🟡 ✅ 🟡 ❌ ❌ Unclear ownership creates handoff gaps
Determine next required action 🟡 ✅ ❌ 🟡 🟡 Next steps not intuitive from the UI
Understand where a delay is occurring 🟡 ✅ 🟡 ❌ ❌ Delay causes hard to trace
Restart a stalled vehicle process ✅ 🟡 ❌ ❌ ✅ Most depend on others or external help
Filter vehicles by auction date ✅ ✅ 🟡 🟡 ✅ Search/filter logic inconsistent or hidden
Complete entire workflow from repo to sale 🟡 ✅ ❌ 🟡 ✅ Workflow fragmented across steps/tools
Locate vehicle documents (e.g. title, repo) 🟡 🟡 ✅ ❌ ✅ Inconsistent document storage and links
Legend: ✅ Success (no help) 🟡 Partial (some help) ❌ Fail (could not complete)

Current design audit highlights

Step 2: 🔎 Pain Point Synthesis & Opportunity Framing

After conducting contextual inquiries, shadowing, and workflow analysis, we mapped user frustrations into thematic pain points. These weren’t just usability annoyances—they were process breakdowns that slowed down the business.

Pain Point Opportunity
⚠️Lack of task visibility: Users didn’t know where a vehicle was in the process or who was responsible for the next action. 📊Design a visual timeline: to help users understand the full vehicle journey at a glance.
🧷Disconnected tools: Slack, spreadsheets, and the legacy UI fragmented decision-making and slowed down handoffs. 👤Surface ownership clearly: so that teams know who’s responsible and what’s next.
📄Unclear document access: Title, condition reports, and repo docs were buried in links or offline sources. 🧭Unify actions and access: centralize key vehicle documents and next steps into one interface.
⏱No delay detection: Teams couldn’t easily identify blocked vehicles or intervene in time. 🚦Introduce delay indicators: highlight stalled vehicles with proactive alerts.

🧪 Step 3: Concept Exploration & Timeline Model

I explored three UI directions based on user flows. Below is a comparison of each, including rationale and feedback.

Kanban Flow
Drag-and-drop friendly, but didn't capture the linearity of vehicle progression. Lacked holistic visibility and created friction across handoffs.
Tab-Based Dashboard
Familiar UI pattern segmented by team, but required too much clicking and made collaboration harder. Users felt "siloed."
Timeline Model
Matched real-world workflows, allowed quick status checks, and centralized ownership. Tested best in validation sessions.

📈 Why Timeline Was Chosen

  • ✅ Mirrors real-world vehicle lifecycle.
  • ✅ Anchors conversations around clear milestones.
  • ✅ Enables proactive detection of delays.
  • ✅ Improves visibility and ownership accountability.

📊 Prioritization by Impact & Effort

We mapped feature ideas during team workshops and grouped them by business value and feasibility. Accessibility best practices informed our prioritization.

Color-coded labels and ownership indicators: Easy to implement and dramatically increased workflow clarity. Icons and text pairing ensured accessibility.

Wireframe versions

Wireframe Testing Summary
🗣️

Stakeholder Feedback

Agents and analysts flagged issues with unclear icons and document locations during early wireframe reviews.

🔍

Insights

Users needed clearer ownership, visible next steps, and centralized access to repo docs.

⚙️

Design Updates

We added icon labels, grouped docs in cards, and introduced a “Next Step” callout styled in our brand blue.

Step 4: ✨ Final Design and Validation
Screens reflect agent-tested improvements based on real workflows and feedback.
Vehicle timeline interface with lifecycle stages and status indicators
Vehicle lifecycle timeline with clear ownership and blockers
Inventory table listing vehicles with status, process stage, and updates
Inventory queue with status tags and actionable process stages

Vehicle card with ownership details and vehicle info such as MMR that auto-updates

Live vehicle location across transport, storage, and yard

🧪 User Testing Scorecard – Inventory Management Workflow

Task Participant 1 Participant 2 Participant 3 Participant 4 Participant 5 Success Rate
Identify vehicle status on the timeline ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 100.00%
Find who’s responsible for the current step ✅ ✅ 🟡 ✅ ✅ 90.00%
Determine next required action 🟡 ✅ 🟡 ✅ ✅ 80.00%
Understand where a delay is occurring ❌ ✅ ✅ 🟡 ✅ 70.00%
Restart a stalled vehicle process ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ 80.00%
Filter vehicles by auction date ✅ ✅ ✅ 🟡 ✅ 90.00%
Complete entire workflow from repo to sale 🟡 ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 90.00%
Explain what the timeline colors/icons mean 🟡 ❌ ✅ 🟡 ✅ 60.00%
Locate vehicle documents (e.g. title, repo) ❌ 🟡 ✅ ❌ ✅ 60.00%
Legend: ✅ Success (no help) 🟡 Partial (some help) ❌ Fail (could not complete)

The final summary from Marvin on user interface and experience as quoted below ,

"User Interface and Experience: Satisfaction with new design for time-saving and user-friendliness, though questions about implementation details remain.Request for note entry concerning vehicle value and condition at the auction.Issues with navigating prototype interfaces, including confusion over screen sharing and limited action buttons."

🛠 Step 5: Dev Handoff & QA Support

Once the final designs were approved, I prepared detailed documentation and worked closely with engineering and QA to ensure a smooth implementation.

📁 Handoff Process

  • Organized all screens and components in Figma with consistent naming and layout specs.
  • Provided redline annotations for spacing, states, and breakpoints in Figma for legacy compatibility.
  • Created interactive prototype and screen flows to explain micro-interactions and conditional logic.
  • Documented empty states, edge cases, error states, and mobile variants.

🧪 QA Collaboration

  • Partnered with QA to define test cases aligned with user stories and edge flows.
  • Validated builds using axe DevTools for accessibility compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA).
  • Helped verify responsive behavior on real devices and browser breakpoints.
  • Flagged and tracked pixel and behavior deviations using Jira with screenshots and videos.

This tight feedback loop helped catch UI bugs early and preserved the design intent through launch. Engineering reported zero blockers during handoff and QA flagged 98% of UI components as test-passed in the first round.

Reflection and Personal Growth

One challenge I faced was balancing the expectations of multiple teams—each with unique workflows and priorities. Early alignment sessions helped, but it took several iterations and honest usability testing to unify those needs into a single, intuitive interface.

If I could revisit this project, I would bring agents into the wireframing stage earlier. Their insights were gold, and involving them sooner would have saved some midstream pivots.

This project reinforced my belief that clarity drives trust—and that scalable design systems should mirror the mental models of the people using them. It’s a mindset I carry forward in every product I help shape.