Cetec Work Order
Goal: Make people’s jobs easier by providing a simple, intuitive, and easy-to-use Work Order experience
Role: Research & Design
Timeline: 3 months
User Research | Stakeholder Collaboration | Design Strategy
| UX Design | Developer Hand-off
Overview
This summer I dove into the world of manufacturing through the perspective of UX and UI design as a design intern at Cetec ERP, a software company that aims to simplify and organize complex information and workflows for manufacturers. We’re talking orders, inventory, sales, parts, labor, inspections, accounting, and more! In short, Cetec wants to be ‘the brain’ so that people have what they need at their fingertips and can do their job more effectively.
The Work Order experience is one of the most important and visited in Cetec. What’s a Work Order? Think of it like assembling furniture. You get a list of parts, step-by-step instructions, and a general idea of how long it will take.
In manufacturing, a Work Order does the same thing but at a much larger scale. It holds all the materials, steps, and labor details needed to build a product. It’s relied on daily by floorworkers, supervisors, and upper management alike.
With so many users depending on it, improving the Work Order experience was a key opportunity for thoughtful UX.
Real paper Work Orders you might recognize!
The Challenge
Cetec’s existing Work Order experience is functional but clunky. Users struggle to find the information they need, and the interface can feel overwhelming. Managers can’t quickly track progress or see where a part is on the floor. Floorworkers often open multiple tabs just to follow their instructions. Everyone wants the information they need in one place, at their fingertips.
Our goal was to make the
Work Order simple, intuitive, and easy to use.
1. Getting Started
My first step was learning how Cetec works, then diving into the Work Order process. I followed the Double Diamond framework, starting with discovery and assessment.
Internal Stakeholder Interviews
I met with people across Leadership, Engineering, Sales, and Marketing to understand how the business thinks about the Work Order and what technical or strategic constraints I’d need to keep in mind.
User Interviews
After understanding the internal perspective, I needed to hear from actual users. I created a session format that let users walk me through how they interact with the Cetec Work Order, pointing out frustrations and showing their workarounds.
I spoke with 8 users across 5 manufacturers producing a variety of products, ranging from wire harnesses to biomedical devices. One of the highlights was getting to visit a biomedical company in person to see a floorworker using Cetec in the real world.
These interviews gave me a strong foundation for understanding real user needs, different usage scenarios, and where improvements would make the biggest impact.
2. Defining the Scope
With a clearer picture of user needs and opportunity areas, it was time to narrow the focus. I reviewed the findings with my manager, and we decided to focus the redesign on floorworker users, whose needs are more specific and consistent. We agreed to address manager needs in a future project. However, improvements aimed at floorworkers will benefit all users because of the improved access to information and better process visibility.
Key Focus Areas
3. Design Time!
Iteration
With a clear scope and direction, I started sketching layout options. I intentionally pushed myself to explore different structures and layouts rather than sticking to the current system. This helped me break out of old patterns and think about what would actually serve users best.
Current Design
User Feedback
I created a prototype and organized feedback sessions with 4 Cetec users—3 virtual and 1 in person. I walked users through task flows with the new design and heard their feedback about understandability, usefulness, and practicality.
Key Insights:
These sessions helped confirm that the redesign was moving in the right direction and gave me the final refinements I needed to make the design stronger and more usable. People were intrigued by some of the big new ideas in the design and helped to clarify why other ideas may not work, giving me more insight into the manufacturing process.
4. The New Design
My Design
The new design brings clarity, flexibility, and ease of use to the Work Order experience and fits within the existing Cetec ecosystem, enabling the team to develop and deliver value to customers quickly.
Everything in One Place
Improved Instructions Presentation
Easy to Understand Progress
5. What’s Next
Developer Hand-Off
I created a developer hand-off document that outlines every component of the new design and how they should behave across different scenarios, including edge cases, visual states, and interactions. Writing this document was a great exercise in clarity as I needed to think through each part of the system and ensure that all behaviors were captured and understandable. Clarity was also key as my development team was in India and I needed to make sure that they could rely on the document to get the information as I couldn’t be there in person.
What I’ve Learned
This internship has been a crash course in real-world UX. I had the chance to work on a meaningful product design challenge that involved collaborating with people from different departments at the company and importantly, working directly with users.
My user interviews and design feedback sessions were a real highlight of my internship. Being able to hear from people who interact with the Work Order experience as part of their daily job gave me unique insights and helped me to advocate for improvements. I kept these real people in mind throughout my design process and reflected on them when I made design decisions. The user research also connected the product team with users in a new way. Seeing how people used the product in the real world was an eye opener for everyone!
This project gave me the opportunity to see the magic that user research can have in informing design decisions and focusing a team!