OVERVIEW
With about two years in the market and seeking to expand their business, mienvio was in a transition from being a small startup to being an established logistics solution in Mexico. But there was a catch; they'd been operating only with their MVP without much regard for user experience.
The client
mienvio is a Mexican startup that, helps small and medium online businesses to handle their logistics in a more organized way. As a startup going from being a small company to an established one, it comes with challenges and decisions to be made, one of which was to set the polar star to guide their product.
the problem
mienvio started working as a kayak.com for shipping labels, in other words, if you need a shipping label we’ll help you find the best deal. It worked for some time but with competition growing, and after some mentoring, they realized they were targeting the wrong client. That’s when they pivoted to provide a better way for businesses to handle their shipments and logistics.
mienvio proceeded to quickly develop plugins for Shopify and adapt their platform for it to be more logistic centered.
I was brought in to help build a product team. With the input of customers, stakeholders, and other designers built up the new mienvio and a design culture inside the company (I also did their rebrand, check the spanish article about it here)
Here is a quick reference of the product as it was operating when I arrived:
The goal
Design a product that can help e-commerces handle their logistics in a more organized manner and faster than going to the postal office.
the process
First we, a team of two designers, needed to understand the vision of the stakeholders. To do this we interviewed the founding partners of mienvio, in order to wrap our head around what they wanted their product to be.
Then we moved on to the actual users of the platform and Shopify plugin. We wanted to see how we could make their work easier, what their pain points were, where the current solution was spot on and where it completely missed the mark. From these interviews we created our personas.
Finally, we talked with the internal dev team. We are talking about a startup here and bringing their perspective into the fold is always important in our process.
So when we finished the discovery process we realized that the idea of having one plugin for each online market place was not the solution, since it would mean N platforms to maintain and N platforms for the user to get used to.
Thats when mienvio 1.0 was born, a central hub to manage all your logistics no matter the marketplace.
ideation
Once the general idea was established, we moved into brainstorming solutions, defining user journeys, and mapping the experience.
Design & test
Using our findings, we started working on wireframing on paper first.
Once our paper wireframes were done, we indentified the core functionality of the platform and digitized those screens to be tested by users.
Finally we tested our solution, learned from our insights, and then adjusted our prototype to test again and iterate
One platform to rule them all
mienvio 1.0 was the result of a lot of hard work and dedication to our users. They’ll now be able to sync all their orders from every marketplace they sell from, and beyond purchasing shipping labels, they’ll be able to have clearer communication with their clients now that they can now see where the things they bought are. At the end of the whole process, all the data can be summarized to gain control of their logistics.
THE END PRODUCT
We wanted to bring mienvio to a cleaner space with no clutter and clearer language. (Let’s talk like our real users talk about their logistics.) We also provided little delightful interactions to our client to make the experience memorable.
DESIGN SYSTEM
We also developed a lightweight design system to help mienvio iterate faster and build a cleaner, more maintainable platform. At the end of the day, this translates to less bugs, and happier, calmer clients.
Results
Go to projectAfter the mentioned changes this is the current state of the startup:
– 1,500+ registered users
– An average of 2,500 ship labels created monthly
update: As today mienvío got accepted in 500 startups program
NEXT STEPS
We know that the product is constantly evolving and fine tuning, so there is a long way to go. But now mienvio has a design culture that focuses on solving the client problems and listening to their input in a more structured way. It’s a win for both sides.
