Client
The corporate social responsibility arm of HCLTech in India, HCL Samuday has been launched in Thoothukudi district with an extensive and comprehensive needs identification exercise in 95 village panchayats. Over the past eight years, HCL Samuday has created a sustainable, scalable, and replicable integrated and sustainable village development model focused on six core areas - Agriculture, Education, Health, Environment, Livelihood, and WASH. The stakeholders team for this specific project were from the Pudur and Villathikulam panchayat.
Project Overview
HCL Samuday owns five tailoring units in their village panchayats. These units encourage women to learn and work on small textile projects. As these units involve a lot of data from employees, textiles, machines, and money flow, the team wanted a master web app that could be used to foresee, manage, and maintain data.
Roles and Scope
We were a team of 1 project manager 3 designers and 3 front-end developers and 2 back-end developers.
I was the lead designer and our scope was to create a functioning MVP of the tailoring master web app.
Client
The corporate social responsibility arm of HCLTech in India, HCL Samuday has been launched in Thoothukudi district with an extensive and comprehensive needs identification exercise in 95 village panchayats. Over the past eight years, HCL Samuday has created a sustainable, scalable, and replicable integrated and sustainable village development model focused on six core areas - Agriculture, Education, Health, Environment, Livelihood, and WASH. The stakeholders team for this specific project were from the Pudur and Villathikulam panchayat.
Project Overview
HCL Samuday owns five tailoring units in their village panchayats. These units encourage women to learn and work on small textile projects. As these units involve a lot of data from employees, textiles, machines, and money flow, the team wanted a master web app that could be used to foresee, manage, and maintain data.
Roles and Scope
We were a team of 1 project manager 3 designers and 3 front-end developers and 2 back-end developers.
I was the lead designer and our scope was to create a functioning MVP of the tailoring master web app.
Research and findings
The team went on a service safari to one of the tailoring units to better understand the operations. We observed the number of people and how they recorded attendance, production, etc. To our surprise, even though the data were recorded in physical notebooks, it seemed to have an obvious system. The only drawback physical data would lack is analyzing these collected data for future trends and reports. And that was the long-term goal of developing this web app.
From the service safari, we understood that
The tailoring women have basic technical exposure and knowledge
There are 5 units or centers in total, which has a center manager for each
People work three shifts a day.
Employees are paid an hourly wage.
Ideation
After the service safari, the design team and the project manager had an intense brainstorming session. We combined mapping and clustering ideas and then created a simple information architecture to start with.
This gave us a head start to start designing the interface for MVP.
Features listed,
Dashboard
Centers and shifts list
Product List
Add role
Invoice
Employee List
Recording Attendance
To record the attendance, we wanted to create unique QR codes that need to be scanned in when they enter and scan out when they leave for the day. In this way, the employees don’t have to hold any hindrances towards tech knowledge and can also give the admin team accurate data.
Reflections
This project was an invaluable opportunity to apply UX/UI design principles in a real-world setting, contributing to a product that promotes social connectivity and culinary exploration. It challenged me to think creatively about how to meet user needs and preferences, enhancing my skills in research, design, and collaboration. The experience underscored the importance of user feedback in the design process and the impact of thoughtful design on user engagement and satisfaction.
Final Takeaways
As someone who loves projects towards social causes, this project was successfully delivered in 8 months of development with utmost care and iterations. Currently it's being tested with one of the tailoring centers for data collection and adaptability for the employees.
Features that we would incorporate after first round of testings would be reporting, exporting of data in different forms and more personalization.
As a lead designer in a team of 3, it was important to have regular check-ins with the team and laying a design system for a smooth process.
Reflections
This project was an invaluable opportunity to apply UX/UI design principles in a real-world setting, contributing to a product that promotes social connectivity and culinary exploration. It challenged me to think creatively about how to meet user needs and preferences, enhancing my skills in research, design, and collaboration. The experience underscored the importance of user feedback in the design process and the impact of thoughtful design on user engagement and satisfaction.
Final Takeaways
As someone who loves projects towards social causes, this project was successfully delivered in 8 months of development with utmost care and iterations. Currently it's being tested with one of the tailoring centers for data collection and adaptability for the employees.
Features that we would incorporate after first round of testings would be reporting, exporting of data in different forms and more personalization.
As a lead designer in a team of 3, it was important to have regular check-ins with the team and laying a design system for a smooth process.
