Transforming a hero business model into a scalable solution

Trystar needed an internal system to keep up with high demands for their products. The biggest problem was that they had little to no digital record of products and how to create them without a senior product engineers help.

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Client
Trystar
Timeframe
3+ Years
Service
Digital Product Improvement
Tools Used
  • Figma
  • Miro

Project Overview

Trystar manufactures high end welding cable leads, electrical distribution panels, welding racks, and portable power distribution. To produce these products, workers relied on tribal knowledge. Schematics and invoices were passed around on paper. Lack of digital tracking led to error ridden and inefficient processes. Trystar needed help with going from tribal knowledge to democratized information quickly accessible to anyone at the company. A digital workflow was developed to enable Trystar employees to efficiently make products and rapidly scale up their production without errors. As the lead product designer on this project I helped uncover challenges throughout the project and headed off the execution with human centered solutions.

Hierarchy of needs for Trystar to accomplish internal goals

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Challenges

Users were accustomed to tribal knowledge and hero product creation mentality. Critical information was seldom recorded in an accessible manner, with each employee using their own methodologies. Inconsistent product schemes were common in their legacy operating model and led to significant confusion. No methods to replicate products existed hindering new employee training. Scale up of production was sluggish as a result of these challenges. We needed everyone on the same page such that business and product goals could be unified. Careful consideration of all user needs was essential to avoid resistance to change.

Goals:
‍Our goal was to increase sales, decrease production time, and create a singular system for information to live. Creating a seamless ecosystem of functional and easy to use products for Trystar as was top of mind.
Requirements
  1. Create different products to accommodate each user group and their specific needs.
  2. Need products to speak to each other and transfer data seamlessly, enabling a user to successfully complete a task.
  3. Appease stakeholders’ business goals by creating more products in less time with reduced errors.

Process

First we created a timeline to execute different phases of multiple products throughout the company. Our team used an agile method along the way, talking to the users to make sure the timeline allowed for them to create and communicate efficiently and effectively. UI regression test plans were put in place to test that all of our products were working correctly with one another.

Proposed Digital Product Timeline

Product flows were created before wires to ensure the flow was efficient and helpful to that user group. Once stakeholders agreed upon the flows, low fi wires were created. After approval for low fi wires, hi fi designs were created and approved branding was applied. Tickets for development were created with screenshots and user scenarios were outlined for development along with any applicable Figma links or interactive prototypes and flows. As the lead product designer I led user interviews, workshops, stakeholder interviews, requirements & constraints gathering, design reviews, persona building, and journey mapping.

Workshop with Sales and Pre-Sales
Conductor and Product Workflows

For every step/ user group we used the double diamond method. Focusing on one user group at a time and their problems. This way we could start at the bottom with fundamentals and building blocks and make our way up to public facing clients. We needed to start at the bottom to make sure everything following was sound and accurate. Our team was constantly improving and revising products in real time to ensure Trystar could keep up with customer demands.

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Double Diamond Design of Iteration

In addition to creating many different applications, I was in charge of creating a visual design system that matched Trystars existing branding. This design system included style guides and notes for developers in Figma.

Audit/ Workshops

There were many workshops highlighting each user group and their requirements. These workshops and audits included every step in the user and product journey and were facilitated to find out who was involved at a specific stage of the process. Our team also discovered large issues to address while we focused on each user group and section of that process.

Workshop from Customer Portal Roadmap

Final Product/ Solution

We produced many products to cater to different user groups at Trystar and their needs. Different groups had access to different products depending on their needs. Eleven products were created in total to accomplish this. To help information to be accessible we created a Trystar glossary which included key words as well as products and their uses:

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Conductor | Users: Engineers

Platform for engineers to create products, product IDs, and BOMS (parts come from external vendor). The "BOM" or Bill of Materials makes up a product ID. Two product IDs could use the same BOM. The order in which they appear or make up sub assemblies will change the product ID.


(Read Only) Product ID | Users: Anyone within Trystar

Platform for anyone at Trystar to view product IDs.

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Configurator | Users: CX team, Sales

Platform for sales to configure an existing product or create a new one. The new products will be flagged so that engineers can review them.

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Print Image | Users: Engineers

Platform for engineers to create print images. These images will act as a BOM that can be attached to a products list of items.

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Build Page | Users: Customers

Platform for customers to view their product specifications. These pages also include the build code associated with their product, company, invoice, etc.

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Build Search | Users: CX team, Sales

Platform for sales team to search for existing Build pages. These Build pages are for the customers to see what is included in a specific product. The Build Search items are attached to a product and a Build Code specific to a customer. This page is also included in the Configurator.

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XPC - Extreme Product Creator | Users: Engineers

Platform to create products based on an existing anatomy/BOM (outside of the product creator stepper). Lives in Conductor. The goal is to use this platform when a customer requests a custom product.

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Speed Loader | Users: Engineers

The purpose of this product is to upload product IDs rapidly into the database. This is not being driven by a client placing an order. Made for load banks (an acquisition) to get product IDs in quickly. Platform to rapidly create products based on BOM and Operations CSV uploads. Lives in Conductor.

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Priority Queue | Users: Factory Managers

Platform for factory managers to decide which operations on the factory floor will be performed each day.

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Work Cell (Work Instructions Builder) W.I.B. | Users: Factory Managers

Factory screens (TVs) that use icons to teach workers how to complete tasks within an operation. These operations will make a Trystar product.

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Work Cell | Users: Factory Workers

Factory screens (TVs) that use icons to teach workers how to complete tasks within an operation. These operations will make a Trystar product.

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Insights/ Benefits

  1. After creating a product scheme, the sales team can now look up or create products from existing product schemes.
  2. Cut down product design time from a few weeks to a few hours of engineering time leading to a 11900% increase in productivity.
  3. Trystar now has a library of product parts that have their own product ID and can be used again and again. Employees can also look up those products at the click of a button.
  4. The accuracy of creating products increased by 350%.
  5. The time to creating products similar to other products have now been cut in half.
  6. Product creation systems have replaced paper documentation.
  7. Sales team now has a digital system for product information that they share with customers. This system has accurate information that is updated in real time.
  8. Due to an efficiency increase, creation of products has gone up so much that demand is now up by 200%

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