Capital One: Order System Case Study
Project Outline
Role: Product Designer
Responsibilities: UI Design, UX Design
Company: Formerly Sparkpay, now Americommerce
Brief
Sparkpay was Capital One’s small business division that provided banking, in-person commerce, and eCommerce solutions. During my time at the eCommerce division, I worked on the order system that allowed companies to facilitate outgoing, incoming, and incorrect orders. This was the most-visited screen in the entire web application. I practiced human-centered design to discover, design and thoughtfully iterate with feedback from stakeholders and PMs.
The Problem
Business owners have a difficult time accepting and fixing orders due to the complexity and messy format of the current order system. Often times, they expressed feeling scared that they would“mess up” the order. This resulted in them calling our customer support and often having to wait due to high call volumes (of similar issues).
Our Solution
By simplifying features and condensing sections, I made them more consumable when moving through the process of using the new order system. There are two paths when using the order system:
1 - An order needs to be placed manually.
2 - The order was placed and sent but there was a mistake that needs to be corrected.
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Order Dashboard
The goal of this screen was to give the user as much context about an order as possible without flooding them with too much information. We accomplished this by reducing the amount of info on the table and adding in a status system to help with prioritization.
Manual Input
When starting a new order, everything is consolidated from the start so it isn’t overwhelming. As each section is completed, the next step becomes available.
Stays Simple
Completed orders remain easy to understand and edit. From here it only takes one or two clicks to fix order errors. The outcome of this screen was to ensure that the user stayed organized and was empowered to make changes without fear of messing up the order.
Metrics for Success
- Decrease errors when accepting, packing and shipping out orders by 50% (from an error every other day to an error every 4 days)
- Increase the order input speed by 50% (from 20 minutes to 10 minutes)
- Decrease the support team’s call volume by 30% (from roughly 15 hours a week of calls to 10)
The Result
Sadly, due to changes in the organization structure, the project got interrupted in its end stages and was put on hold. I am not entirely sure why this happened but the outcome was Sparkpay being shut down in 2018.
Lessons Learned & Thoughts (2019)
Looking back on this project, I have very mixed feelings. I am proud of the end result. Being my first proper project made it a tough challenge. I went through tons of iterations trying to figure out the best method to solve the problem at hand. I believe I did well despite my limitations. With that being said, I can now see a gaping hole in my past thinking and the process I chose to take to achieve the final result. I focused too much on the features and what they could do for the user. I can see now that I should have focused much more on the user outcome.
Moving Forward
Projects like this have a way of humbling oneself. Even after two years I look back at this project and use it as a reminder of how I should think, act, and communicate with my team. Back then, I thought I knew everything… but I was dead wrong. Humility is the strongest defense against that attitude, and I hope to implement it more moving forward.
“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” — Albert Einstein
