BAE Systems | DrashtiBarot

About

Inteli - BAE Systems

Overview

Year: 2022

TimeLine: 5 Months

Role: Lead Product Designer

Background

The project aimed to demonstrate how blockchain technology could enhance transparency and trust within supply chains by providing real-time visibility to both buyers and suppliers. As part of this initiative, a demo application was developed to showcase how stakeholders could interact with and benefit from a decentralised supply chain system.

Problems to solve

Lack of Visibility: Buyers and suppliers often face challenges in tracking product movement, verifying authenticity, and managing delays due to fragmented systems.
Limited Trust: Without a transparent system, there is limited trust between parties, leading to inefficiencies and disputes.
User Complexity: Blockchain technology can be complex and unfamiliar, requiring intuitive design to ensure ease of use and adoption by non-technical users.

Goal

To design a user-centric, blockchain-powered supply chain demo that clearly illustrates how enhanced visibility and transparency can improve operations for buyers and suppliers, while ensuring the interface is intuitive, engaging, and informed by real user needs.

With a tight deadline to deliver a functional supply chain demo, the need for actionable insights was critical. The goal was to design a blockchain-based solution that provided real-time visibility for both buyers and suppliers—two user groups with distinct needs and workflows. There was no pre-existing UX framework for this emerging technology in the supply chain space, so understanding user pain points from the ground up was essential.

To ground the project in real user needs, we began the discovery phase by developing detailed persona descriptions for each key stakeholder in the supply chain—such as the Procurement Planner and Production Planner. These personas outlined critical aspects of their roles, including day-to-day tasks, current systems and processes, key challenges, and pain points. Most importantly, we defined our ambition for each role: what an ideal experience would look like if visibility and efficiency were improved through blockchain.

With these persona charts in hand, we conducted targeted interviews with stakeholders representing both the buyer and supplier sides. Keeping the personas front and center allowed us to ask more focused, relevant questions and validate whether our assumptions held true in real-world contexts. These conversations not only brought the personas to life but also provided deeper insights into where existing systems fell short—particularly around data transparency, communication lags, and trust between parties. The findings from this phase laid a strong foundation for our design work, ensuring that every feature and interaction in the demo was tied directly to a user need or opportunity identified through research.

From this research, we established three core objectives:

Uncover what buyers and suppliers need from a transparent supply chain system powered by blockchain.
Understand how users currently manage supply chain visibility and where breakdowns occur.
Explore how a blockchain interface can simplify complex data and workflows to drive trust and efficiency.

This project wasn’t just about creating a prototype—it was about designing a tool that made emerging technology accessible, useful, and intuitive for real-world supply chain users.

The interviews

Persona profile

Corresponding persona interview chart

User Journey Maps

Journey map 1

Journey map 2

Affinity Clustering

Affinity clustering 1

Affinity clustering 2

Affinity clustering 3

Turning Insights into Design Principles

Approach: Clustered key problems (e.g., missing data, manual delays) into thematic areas to uncover user needs.

Method: For each pain point, asked:

• What do users need?

• How can design support this?

• Example Insight → Principle → Solution:

Insight: Time wasted on manual data follow-ups.

Principle: “Help users be more efficient through machine automation.”

Solution: Auto-populated fields in request forms to reduce effort and errors.

Outcome:

• Created actionable, user-centred design principles.

• Ensured all design decisions improved efficiency and accountability.

Defining the Optimised User Journey

Objective: Streamline the end-to-end supplier process—from onboarding to payment—by reducing friction, manual effort, and delays.

Approach: Mapped the full journey across key touchpoints (e.g., PO approval, goods receipt, invoice processing, payment).

Stakeholder Integration: Considered roles and interactions between BAE, Maher Manufacturing, and Tier 2 suppliers.

Key Improvements:

• Enhanced data visibility and real-time updates.

• Introduced automation and blockchain integration where relevant.

Outcome:

• Created a unified, frictionless flow aligned with user and business goals.

• Served as a blueprint for interface design and stakeholder alignment.

End-to-end journey

Design

Supplier sketches

Buyer Sketches

Early Interface Sketching & Alignment

Objective: Visualise the end-to-end user flow for both buyers and suppliers.
Process:
- Created rough sketches covering key interactions (e.g., quote submission/approval, shipment tracking, invoice review).
- Mapped experiences from both user perspectives to ensure a complete journey view.
Benefits:
- Enabled fast iteration and early identification of gaps or redundancies.
- Facilitated clear communication with stakeholders.
- Ensured cross-team alignment on the blockchain-enhanced design vision.
Outcome: A solid foundation for higher-fidelity prototypes, grounded in real user needs and workflows.

Goal: Ensure full alignment between interface designs and the end-to-end user journey (buyer & supplier).
Process:
- Mapped each screen to specific journey stages (e.g., onboarding, PO approval, goods receipt, payment).
- Overlaid sketches with the process map to validate coverage and flow.
Key Outcomes:
- Identified intersections between user actions, system automation, and data flow.
- Uncovered opportunities to streamline steps, reduce manual input, and clarify ownership.
- Strengthened the link between UX design and operational processes.
Impact: Translated a high-level journey into a clear, actionable interface structure with full stakeholder alignment.