Mercury
Logistiics Application for US Army
Overview
As a product designer and consultant at VMware's Tanzu Labs, I worked on the Mercury project, a logistics application for the US Army via the Army Software Factory. Our goal was to create a user-friendly interface to track personnel, manage inventory, and enable communication among logisticians. Our team tackled the challenges presented by the legacy Army logistics app, OPLOG Planner, and embraced Lean and Agile methodologies to design an intuitive UI.
Problem
The Tour of Duty product (above) was not easily accessible and outdated, posing a significant challenge for soldiers attempting to find and apply for positions. It became increasingly clear that a modern solution was needed to streamline the search and application process. This challenge served as the catalyst for VMware's Tanzu Labs to create Carrera with the goal of providing Army National Guard soldiers with a user-friendly platform enabling them to find relevant active duty positions with ease.
Solution
Based on this research, we designed a web app that features a clean and modern interface that brings value to the users. The app includes an easy flow for Logisticians to create a plan, add their units, edit equipment, and view their estimate. We also incorporated a Share functionality, so that Logisticians can easily share their plans with other Soldiers to get more visibility and feedback to make more accurate estimations.
Design Process
Research
To inform our design decisions, we conducted both user and market research with logistics soldiers by interviewing them on base.
User Personas
After doing our research, we created a persona of Major Paul Polstner, the Brigade Special Projects Officer who would be our primary user.
Wireframing
Using the insights from our research, we began sketching and ideating potential design solutions.
Design Mockups
One key design decision we made was to include a customizable dashboard on the app's home screen that would allow users to see a summary of their Classes of Supply, inventory, and being able to communicate with other Soldiers who need to know what is needed for this mission.
Prototyping and Testing
Using Figma, we created high-fidelity mockups of the app's key screens and features. We tested these designs with Army logisticians and Brigade SPOs to gather feedback and identify areas for improvement.
Results
The product's MVP was well received by Army Logisticians Brigade SPO personnel. The next steps were to develop in-app sharing, adding additional coding like Unit Identification Codes (UICS), advancing the class of supply estimates, and making it available to SIPR. For my contributions, I received a certificate of appreciation upon departing the project.