CASE STUDY
Order.co: Shaping the Product with Discovery
Role: Lead UX Designer
Overview: Redesigned Order's e-commerce platform experience to simplify complex product addition workflows, reduce user friction, and improve overall usability.
Context & Problem
Background: Order provides businesses with an efficient way to consolidate their monthly business spend onto a single invoice. They were heavily reliant on the cannabis industry, struggling post-pandemic, and experiencing steadily declining customer retention.
Challenge: Users consistently reported that the product was "too hard to use." A significant issue was the 5% monthly customer churn due to product complexity, not offset by new customer acquisition.
My Role, The Team & the Customer
I served as the Lead UX Designer, collaborating closely with the three legs of the stool; Product Management, Engineering, and Design, while collaborating with Senior Executive Leadership.
My responsibilities included leading user research, hypothesis formation, creating journey maps, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, and strategic prioritization of design tasks.
Design Process
I leveraged the Double Diamond method of product design—Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver—to systematically address user pain points, align stakeholders, validate solutions, and ultimately bring these features to life.
This approach enabled thorough exploration and precise definition of user needs, followed by iterative development and delivery of user-centric solutions.
Discovery Research
Business Problem: Users consistently reported that the product was "too hard to use." A significant issue was the 5% monthly customer churn due to product complexity, not offset by new customer acquisition.
Key Hypotheses:
Order customers expect a AAA retail shopping experience
Order customers only need the minimum, “perfect” product info
Business spend was top 3 priorities for Franklin
Franklin (buyer) was the main persona
Research methodology
Research Method Explained: The contextual inquiry method involved observing and interviewing users in their natural working environments to understand their tasks, workflows, and challenges. Insights were synthesized into clear, actionable themes that guided our design decisions.
Target Audience
Franklin: The buyer
Sofia: Manger
Rupert: Finance
Narrowing the Focus
The research uncovered A LOT of pain points. Now that I had real customer problems defined, the high level end-to-end journeymap enabled strategic planning conversations about how to properly resource and solve those problems, in the right order.
Preliminary Results:
Duplicate accounts and product entries were frequent, causing frustration.
Product addition processes lacked consistency and clarity.
Users desired minimal, clear product info for decision-making.
Screenshot of all notes, pain points and themes uncovered in research
High Level End-to-End Journey Map
I was able to use the data obtained through interviews to quickly map out a high level end to end user flow, that included paint points and opportunities.
Insights from journeymap
Significant Database Issues
Duplicate accounts and product entries were frequent, causinguser frustration.
Onboarding & Catalog Creation Friction
Product addition processes lacked consistency and clarity.
Unclear Product Metadata in Catalog
Users desired minimal, clear product info for decision-making.
Solutions & Key Decisions
The research uncovered A LOT of pain points. Now that I had real customer problems defined, the high level end-to-end journeymap enabled strategic planning conversations about how to properly resource and solve those problems, in the right order.
Resourcing Strategy:
Find design-lite backend work for engineering, first
Get design and product 2-4 weeks ahead of engineering
Example of resourcing plan that kept engineering engaged while I figured out the design solution(s)
Fast, Low Fidelity Iteration
Moving on to my first area of focus (prioritized by PM), I built a design system for Product Detail Pages (PDP), and Search results.
Hypotheses:
Order customers desired a standard e-commerce model for Search and PDP
Customers wouldn’t need as much product information for products in their custom catalog
Baymard research would apply to B2B
Testing & Validation
Conducted structured usability tests (4 users, 3 SMEs, 6 hours, 2 prototypes). Feedback led to refinement in filtering and comparison interactions, significantly improving ease of use.
What I learned:
Order customers did in fact respond well to a standard e-commerce model for Search and Product Detail Page
Customers needed the same amount of product information for products in their custom catalog, to instill confidence that they were purchasing the right product.
Much of Baymard’s catalog applied to the PDP and Search results use cases. They have expanded their offerings with B2B research.
Level 2 Journeymaps
The second round of research allowed my to create more detailed journeymaps specific to section of the end-to-end flow
The coordination of back-end engineering work, along with fast, rigorous testing resulted in more clarity around customer problems. This new level of insight set up the design org roadmap for the rest of the year.
Impact & Results
Wins:
Significant reduction in duplicate entries
Dramatic improvement in user efficiency (time to add products reduced)
Increased overall customer satisfaction due to streamlined workflow
Improved customer retention, contributing to strategic goals of enhancing Customer Experience, Total Payment Volume, and Monthly Recurring Revenue.
Impact & Results
The importance of continuous discovery became clear—regular user check-ins prevented wasted effort and allowed early validation. More frequent cross-team alignment meetings would further expedite iteration
Wins:
P0: Developing an onboarding automation catalog and an assistant application to further enhance usability.
P1: Enhancing the Product Landing Page to version 2.0, creating a Category Intermediary Page, and refining the Cart and Approvals processes to deliver a more cohesive and streamlined customer experience.
High Fidelity Mocks
