SmartBox Designer
Enable customers to design and order folding carton products online
Project Overview
Client Name
EFI's MarketDirect StoreFront is a web-to-print solution helping printers boost their online business. It’s a “Shopify” for printers.
As the packaging industry moves faster and faster toward digital – how will the industry evolve to keep up with the ever changing need for faster turnaround and personalised service. We wanted to introduce an addition to its robust Market Direct platform (called PackCentral) that helps packaging service providers transform their business online & increase profitability with new revenue streams and reduced sales costs. It allows quickly create customized web store and customer portals that incorporate clients’ branding guidelines. Build catalogs of SKUs, and add them to a catalog with full pricing control and user access management.
EFI SmartBox™ Designer, features a part of order creation with stunning realistic 3D rendering where end-users can create and design 3D packages by applying their own graphics and artwork, while previewing and approving the job. The production files can be supplied to print/packaging provider, as ready to produce files containing all the necessary high-resolution artwork and die files required.
DATE & DURATION
April 2019 (8 weeks)
TEAM
Product Owner, Project Manager, Engineering Architect, Software Engineers & Lead UX designer (IC)
Demo link (MVP)
My Role & Responsibilities
LEAD UX DESIGNER
I was an individual contributor to this product. My responsibilities were to conduct research, understand business value propositions, conduct competitive analyses, map user personas to their objectives, build better navigation flow, wireframe, and visual design, create click-through prototypes, heuristic evaluation, and concept refinement, provide development support, testing & iterate, and create a UX Design proposal for future scoping & development.
Targeted businesses
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Folding Carton Producers
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Corrugated and Box Producers
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Flexible Packaging
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Tag & Label Printers
Curtesy Abbott-Action packaging
We received research data about targeted businesses from stakeholders and customer communication teams. These teams conducted in-person interviews to get insight into business patterns, current order procurement methods, daily order management & production, client feedback & demands, current client communication challenges, etc.
Packaging manufacturing workflow:
Key drivers:
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To expand business online for order procurement, enable clients to virtually order any product, static or inventory item - anytime.
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To enable online web store to easily customise and incorporate client’s branding, build catalog of SKUs, control pricing and user access management
Research analysis - product scope
With the help of field research data & stakeholder’s inputs, I began with a quick proto-personas describing target users and audiences. This allowed the product team to begin understanding our target user group.
We then conducted a workshop with the key team members - stakeholders, product manager, engineer architect and QA lead to collaborate & provide a simple framework to have conversation about what and why we were building the product MVP.
The platform mainly interacts with 2 personas “Packaging producers/printers” and “End-customers” (brands, agencies etc.). Both sides use the platform to collaborate to fulfill packaging requirements. We outlined the minimum set of features the product needed for the initial MVP and accommodated our users to fulfill their desired outcomes. This gave us a clear starting point for the product roadmap, which was later developed by further detailing, splitting and planning each feature. By understanding the scope, we could easily come back to take a look at the bigger picture. It helped us to keep an eye on the final goal and minimise the risk of getting lost in details.
Our initial findings uncovered various areas of opportunities that the PackCentral platform could offer to packaging producers, like:
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Online portal specifically designed for their requirements,
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Powerful tools to simplify order procurement for wide range of products,
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Automate and streamline order procurement and eliminate costly errors.
Value proposition
The features were targeted to adapt to different business requirements and allow packaging producers to sell anything using flexible powerful product configuration tools.
Dynamic
User Control
Custom
Catalogs & Sites
Powerful Product
Configuration
Intuitive Buyer Experience
Order to
Production
Order creation, with SmartBox designer
For the case study I am focusing on the most important piece in the order procurement - order creation with stunning 3D visualisation.
Make artwork/designing easy for packaging online
The EFI SmartBox™ designer 3D content and visualisation feature is a rich artwork design solution for packaging. The SmartBox™ enables customers create 3D box designs and proof them online before placing an order. Once the order is placed it also provides finished artwork along with die cut file, which is ready for production.
Key success metrics
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Increase job productivity, decreases job turnaround time
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Improve approval, review and sign-off time
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Reduce errors and waste in production
This is a reference to general survey conducted online
Problem statement
How might we help brand owners or designers, design custom packaging online & order without any hassle
Competitive study
Here are some comparative services that offer online box designing (and ordering). They don't exactly compete with the service we offer, but have some functional similarities that our users use too. This helped us see what they were doing and it was a good starting point before the prototype and testing.
Early experiments
Check technology feasibility
As an experiment, a couple of engineers integrated third party 3D rendering tool (based on Unity platform) into the project codebase. This was a quick check on technical capability, possibilities & limitations that helped us gain confidence in the 3D designer feature and pushed us to focus on the design aspects to address users’ needs.
Designing user experience
Based on the learning from early dev. prototype-concept testing, I started translating a few quick ideas and brainstormed on whiteboard and paper sketches to detail some of them.
(Left) some shots of various barnstorming sessions. (Middle) initial wireframe sketches covering feature details. (Right) mapping exercise
I kept in mind the business goals and technical challenges and decided to focus upon some key areas, including simplifying user experience around end user start-point.
User flow analysis
Explored the existing print product (for e.g. business card, booklet) builder user flow to map with the box designer. This helped identify some disconnections, inconsistencies, and dead-ends. I came up with a revised and simplified information architecture that focused on easy steps for end user design and order packaging.
Design a package in 3 easy steps
1.
Select the box type
User can select a template from a library of die-cutting forms. Each design template supplies details of the step and uses this layout for production.
2.
Customise the artwork
User can then add artwork to the design template from their asset library, or select from a preset asset the print shop has assigned. Artwork can be moved, tiled or modified as required to fit the template. User can also select different substrates and finishing options.
3.
Preview and complete the order
User can preview their artwork, using the 3D visualiser, and easily toggle between flat and 3D modes. The visualiser renders different substrates and ensures accurate and precise confirmation. The box folds are also animated so that designers can identify panels in the flat vs. 3D mode. Once complete, user can add their item to the cart and complete the checkout process.
With the above steps user will be able to design the packaging requirements quickly and with minimal effort. This 3D visualisation and prototype tool is equipped with all the common familiar designer tool functions, like:
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Multiple levels of undo (and redo)
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Keyboard shortcuts
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Right-click contextual menus
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Artwork layers
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Data tools - form fields, variables and switches
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Real-time preview of product customisation
Impact
The early adopter businesses have given immense support to the MarketDirect PackCentral options. They were excited to offer their customers the option order products online with an intuitive design tool and management process.
Key customer benefits observed during the feature validation:
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Allow open for business...24/7, enabled clients to order virtually any product, static or inventory item.
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Able to customize a website tailored to a specific customer’s needs or industry.
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Supported key brand agents to better manage their artwork and assets through production.
We also received a lot of feedback after the initial product launch from a few targeted customers. This data was organised into bugs, satisfaction, and feature requests/new functionalities. The team has affinitize & priorities feedback accordingly.
Some of them share their positive testimonies to help spread the word...
