Order picking in a dark store

Order picking is one of the key products at Samokat. The business prioritizes fast order picking and quick handoff to delivery

The picker's task is to quickly take the customer's order into work, start picking it as soon as possible, specify the box numbers, complete the picking process, and hand the assembled order over to the courier for delivery to the client.

The hypothesis that started it all

Dark store products have existed almost since the company's founding, so the quality of the current design solutions raised doubts about their relevance

– Do they really work well?
– Can we do better and positively impact user experience metrics?
(Time to Task, number of errors, usability)

My role

Worked end-to-end on the project: from discovery and problem definition through design to final release

• Conducted field research in 2 dark stores

• Conducted 6 interviews with pickers and dark store admins

• Identified key issues affecting Time to Task, errors, and task pickup speed

• Conducted 10 UX tests

• Launched an A/B test with the product team across 260 dark stores

• As a result of UMUX surveys, 359 out of 402 users rated the updates 5/5

• Released the updates to 2 400 dark stores

User Pain Points

The main insight

Pickers move quickly around the dark store, scanning items with a ring scanner; the application needs to adapt to their workflow

Hypotheses

Start of assembly

The process begins with item scanning, with an option for pickers to reverse the list sorting

Specifying the box numbers

The box number screen appears automatically once the last item in the order is scanned

Order Picking Completion

The picking process can be completed by scanning a barcode

Next task

A new picking task opens automatically

Result