Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions are costly and time consuming to design, create and implement. Bitkemy asked us at Artefact to design a modular system that would "generate" custom ERP applications for businesses.

MY ROLES

Ideation
UX Design
UI Design

Simplify resource planning to enable a turnkey form generator.

Make it like visual programming for children

The amount of variables a system like this has to consider made this an extremely complex problem—one of the most complex in Artefact's history, in fact. We drew on Kagami's deep understanding of their target companies in areas of the world, such as concrete manufacturers in Africa, to learn how the custom applications would be used. We developed seven personas to address the complexity of people and roles involved in the process. We then created a set of scenarios that identified all of the key activities that each persona would need to generate the ERP applications. This helped us develop six overarching design principles to guide our design.

We sketched hundreds of scenario solution ideas and categorized them by task within each scenario. These ideas addressed both what capabilities the application should have, and the unique ways the tasks might be realized in the interface. 

This process enabled us to design a system inspired by visual programming for kids that would be simple and flexible enough to mold to any of our client’s target organizations. Our system had two main components:

1) Templates
2) Forms

We then worked through dozens of UX flows and tested them with our clients to zero in on the final solution.

Templates

Templates are the starting point for projects that are manually created by industry experts and are intended to be reused by multiple projects in an industry. Templates look like logic diagrams and take a visual, contextual approach to programming. That is, only certain functions and options are available at contextually-appropriate places, helping the expert craft project flows quickly and accurately.

Forms

Forms are the final product and output of the system. They are basically HR forms, with each field having only the options specified by the template. The customization of these forms allows the organization to employ less technical people instead of high-cost ERP experts to reduce overhead costs.

PORTALS

We designed a series of portals for Kagami experts to access their various libraries of Projects and Templates while separating out the most relevant things at any given moment.

DASHBOARD

We also designed a dashboard view capable of generating extremely detailed custom reports. 

A detailed document describing key product features and functionality for the Kagami development team.

As of this writing, the product is still in development.