Team Members: Carolyn Bussey, Amy LeFager and Laura Washington
This application was developed as a class project during my studies at DePaul. As a small team of 3, we created, researched, built and user tested a flexible application for mobile, web and tablet.
Craft Tracker is an inventory and expense manager designed for small creative business people. It harnesses receipt-scanning on mobile and the ability to manually add materials to reduce the time needed to handle inventory levels and materials budgets. Craft Tracker makes it easier and faster to handle administrative tasks, leaving the user more time for creative work.
CraftTracker, Final Axure File: http://1j4x64.axshare.com/#c=2
Research and Development
Product Concept
Our first step in this project was to outline the product concept and its typical users. Our goal with CraftTracker was to create an application that would aid our users in itemizing and organizing inventory as it is purchased, using effort saving tech like text/barcode recognition using the camera. Additionally it would provide more complete data analysis and graphs in browser.
A well organized and complete inventory would aid our users by keeping them from over or under purchasing, and provide complete records for their accounting, which will help them analyze their costs, determine the retail value of their creations, and aid in tax form completion.
A well organized and complete inventory would aid our users by keeping them from over or under purchasing, and provide complete records for their accounting, which will help them analyze their costs, determine the retail value of their creations, and aid in tax form completion.
User Profile
User creates products of original crafts and sells them at craft fairs, or online using a service like Etsy or Handmade at Amazon.
This app would help this user by allowing easy tracking of purchase of craft supplies. This can help The Artisan determine her return on investment based on the sales of the crafts she creates using the purchased supplies. Because the app collects data on supplies purchased, the user can also easily generate an inventory of supplies to reference when shopping to prevent purchasing materials she already has in her craft supply inventory.
Landscape
In our research we found several expense tracking and inventory management applications. However, these applications are almost all desktop focused and require a huge investment of time and effort to enter the user's inventory and expenses. CraftTracker is focused on assisting creative people “in the wild” - to streamline their expense and inventory management by utilizing novel inputs from mobile phone (text, photo text recognition and barcode scanning)
I analyzed three current products used to manage inventory and expenses (full write up here)
User Testing
In order to begin testing our concepts with users as quickly as possible, I made a low fidelity, interactive prototype in Axure.This prototype focused on one feature of our application, the photo-receipt scanner from the mobile version of our application.
CraftTracker Prototype 1: http://4ql1kb.axshare.com/#c=2
Task Scenario:
"I would like you to pretend that you are an artist that creates stoneware mugs and vessels. You are also a Snaptrack user. You have already taken the time to set up an account and download the app on your mobile phone. After a trip to buy more supplies from Continental Clay Minneapolis, you use Snaptrack to scan your receipt and add the new items to your inventory."
Our team value tested this prototype with 6 potential users.
First prototype task flow.
Findings
What we learned about our app:
The app is appealing to users, and the majority of users tested felt that the app would be valuable.
The receipt scanning function was appealing to help users easily capture purchases.
The ability to access the inventory of materials already owned via mobile was appealing.
Users felt that the app could save them money because they would be knowledgeable about what materials they already had and would not overbuy materials they did not actually need.
What we learned about our users:
Only one out of six users tested keep track of their material inventory for crafting, but the majority of users expressed a desire to have some sort of system to know what materials they already owned.
Overbuying materials is a problem and multiple users expressed frustration at not being able to easily know what they already own.
Crafts and crafters vary greatly and different types of crafters have different needs and expectations for what the app should do (example, a knitter being able to note if specific needles are currently being used in another project)
What we learn about our prototype:
Overbuying materials is a problem and multiple users expressed frustration at not being able to easily know what they already own.
Crafts and crafters vary greatly and different types of crafters have different needs and expectations for what the app should do (example, a knitter being able to note if specific needles are currently being used in another project)
What we learn about our prototype:
Terminology needs to be clear so users intuitively understand the functions of the buttons. The term ‘inventory’ was ambiguous to some users (example, users weren't sure if it was referring to the store’s inventory or the crafters inventory of completed projects)
Stepping through each item on the receipt would cause users to quit if there were many items to review
It was not evident that you could click on the item from the Inventory Added Summary Screen, and some users did not know why they would need to do that.
Users want the ability to categorize materials in their own way and add notes for items.
Stepping through each item on the receipt would cause users to quit if there were many items to review
It was not evident that you could click on the item from the Inventory Added Summary Screen, and some users did not know why they would need to do that.
Users want the ability to categorize materials in their own way and add notes for items.
Axure Redesign 1 - Responsive Elements
Sketch for new mobile home screen.
CraftTracker Prototype 2: http://97bfi9.axshare.com/#c=2
Using information from our first user test, our team made the following changes to our application.
Home Screen:
We updated the home screen to include a hamburger menu with major application functions. We found that some users had trouble navigating through the application, and they tended to look to the top left for menu options. This change makes our application more consistent with other mobile apps.
We changed the background from the live camera view to an infinite scrolling list of materials. This allows the user to access inventory information more quickly. We found that our users were most interested in this feature of the application, so adding it to the home screen made the feature easier to access.
Add Materials Button:
We removed the three "add materials" buttons and replaced them with a large "+" button, which when touched, displays the three methods of adding materials.
Terminology:
We changed Inventory to Projects, as inventory had an ambiguous meaning in our application.
Tablet and Desktop Layouts:
We also created tablet and desktop views in our prototype.
Second prototype task flow (mobile).
Second prototype home screen (tablet).
User Testing (2)
In our second round of usability testing, we tested 9 users, 3 with the mobile version, 3 with the tablet version and 3 with the desktop version.
Every user had the task to manually enter the item 1 pint of Night Frost Glaze for $17.85 into the Craft Tracker app. The mobile and tablet testers had a second task to enter information from a receipt to add materials using the camera scanning function.
Findings (2)
CraftTracker Prototype (final): http://1j4x64.axshare.com/#c=2
Based on our main findings, updates have been made to the “add materials” button to make it more visible. The option “Add Materials” was added to the drop down menu and the Materials page was removed altogether to reduce confusion. Help text was added to the text fields and the “+” icon on the successful scan page was changed to a save icon to help guide the interaction.
The text was changed in some places to encourage a positive mood and make the interaction more fun. Phrases such as “Way to go!” and “Gettin’ organized!” were added to the materials screen and “We all make mistakes sometimes” in the Cancel screen were added to make the app more engaging. Lastly, an animated GIF and some cute images were added to increase visual interest
