Cold Chain Reporting

Before getting too far into the designs, I spent time reviewing the existing wireframes and joining stakeholder meetings. I wanted to understand what people needed from the dashboard and where their current process was falling short.

The tool needed to support several groups, including category managers, supply chain executives, retail operations, and food safety. Working closely with the product manager helped me gather that context and connect the design work to their needs.

I created personas and journey maps to bring that information together. The personas captured each group’s goals and challenges, while the journey maps showed the larger process and where we could make improvements.

Once I had a better understanding of the project, I ran a series of design workshops using methods inspired by the LUMA framework. This gave the team a chance to contribute ideas before we settled on a direction.

We started with lightning demos to look at other dashboards and see what worked well. From there, we moved into Crazy 8s to sketch different approaches. We finished with an art museum activity, where we displayed the sketches, shared feedback, and voted on the ideas we wanted to explore further.

The next step was figuring out which metrics people actually needed to see. I helped lead a card sorting activity where stakeholders ranked and organized the key data points for the dashboard.

This helped us prioritize temperature compliance trends and shipment-specific details. Once we understood those priorities, we could think more carefully about how to show the information.

We used line charts to show changes over time and tables to make shipment details easier to compare. The goal was to make the data useful without making the dashboard harder to navigate.

With the priorities in place, I started exploring low-fidelity layouts and workflows. The existing wireframes gave me a starting point, which I refined to better organize the information and support the MVP.

One of the harder parts was showing a trip on a timeline graph. We needed a clear way to connect a shipment’s journey with its temperature data, but Power BI’s built-in visualizations did not offer all the flexibility we wanted.

I worked closely with the developers to explore what was possible. We also had to account for delayed data and the performance challenges of working with large datasets. Those constraints shaped the design as much as the visual layout did.

I shared the wireframes with the product manager, developers, and other team members to get feedback on the layout and interactions. Stakeholders helped us understand how they wanted to move through the data, and developers helped us keep the designs practical.

After a few rounds of refinement, I moved into high-fidelity mockups. I applied Kroger’s design system for typography, colors, and components, then worked through the visual hierarchy and the details of each interaction.

I facilitated unmoderated user testing to see whether people could navigate the dashboard and understand the information. I gave key users specific tasks that reflected the work the tool needed to support.

Their feedback helped confirm that the designs were intuitive and actionable, while also showing us where there was room to improve. This gave us another opportunity to refine the experience before handoff.

For handoff, I prepared annotated mockups and design specifications that explained the layout, components, and interactions. I wanted the developers to have enough context to understand how the screens should work, along with how they should look.

I stayed involved to answer questions, provide guidance, and work through technical challenges. Regular conversations with the developers helped us keep the implementation aligned with the design and the needs we had identified at the start.