Picqer

Working at Picqer meant building software that thousands of warehouse employees depend on every single day. Not occasionally, not when they feel like it. All day, every day, their entire job runs through it. That's a different kind of responsibility than most software products. There's almost no margin for error. A broken feature isn't just annoying, it's packages that don't ship, a business that grinds to a halt, someone's very bad day that you caused from behind your laptop.

I worked across both desktop interfaces and Zebra handheld devices. Some users preferred a big screen for their workflow, others were constantly on the move with a scanner strapped to their hand. Designing for both meant constantly switching context, and never assuming that what worked on one would translate to the other.

One of the bigger challenges was the scale of diversity across customers. We designed for the single-person webshop shipping 25 packages a day, and for the fulfilment centre processing that same number every minute. Same product, completely different worlds.

The receipts redesign

The project I'm most proud of is the full redesign of the receipts feature. I started from scratch and spent real time in warehouses, big and small, just watching. Not just how people used our software, but everything around it. How they moved. Where containers were parked. Whether they had a dedicated receiving area or just a corner of the floor. Whether they were handling one item or a pallet of 40,000.

What became clear pretty quickly was that there was no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Some users had no scanner at all and worked entirely with a mouse. Others scanned everything. Some only had a scanner, which meant pressing space or enter wasn't even an option. So we designed barcodes that let you perform actions with just a scanner. No keyboard required.

The new receipts feature ended up supporting all of it. Working with a full container? Covered. Want to receive an entire shipment at once? Fine. Need to scan items one by one? Also fine. That flexibility didn't come from a whiteboard session. It came from standing in warehouses and paying attention.