UX Research + UI/UX Design
62% fewer steps. Zero teams still using Excel.
Client
Mechanite Engineering Solutions
Industry
Manufacturing
Service
UX Research + UI/UX Design
Research Methods
5 methods employed
User Roles Studied
9 job roles
Redesigning the System a Factory Had Already Given Up On
When the software built to run a factory starts losing to a spreadsheet, the problem is not the employees. It is the interface. Mechanite’s ERP had every module a manufacturer needs, yet shop floor supervisors were abandoning it mid-shift, reverting to Excel to close out their day. This is a UX failure with a direct business cost. It is exactly the kind of problem design, applied with rigour, can fix.
The challenge
A flat 16-item sidebar with no hierarchy. Forms asking for 30–50 fields at once, errors only surfacing at submission, Create and List views split across separate pages. The deeper issue: no one had ever mapped who was actually using the system. A shop floor supervisor and a managing director were handed identical interfaces — designed for neither.
The approach
Research before redesign.
Five research methods, nine job roles, one clear diagnosis: the sidebar was a feature list, not a workflow. The redesign compressed 16 modules into 6, ordered by actual usage frequency. Forms were split into collapsible sections. Inline validation replaced submission-time errors. Create and List views were unified. Every structural call maps to a named principle — Hick’s Law, Progressive Disclosure, Fitts’s Law — not a stylistic preference.
Deliverables
01
UX Research
02
Information Architecture
03
Component Library
04
Interaction Flows & Logic Docs
05
Role-Based Access Specs
The outcome
The abandoned system became the system the team actually uses. Delivered: full component library, annotated interaction flows with logic documentation, API and endpoint notes, and role-based access specs for five user groups. The AI Layer, a chatbot that queries any module and auto-generates charts from plain-language prompts — was designed in as the platform’s next efficiency layer.
62% | Fewer steps for any worker to complete a daily task on the shop floor 9 | Job roles studied — from factory floor operator to Managing Director 0 | Teams still using Excel workarounds after the redesign launched