Warehouse console

Context

Warehouse operators handling inbound goods. The work is repetitive by design: scan, check, confirm, move on. Each pass previously touched four separate screens, and the same identifier had to be typed into three of them.

Problem

The interface had been designed as if each screen were a destination. In practice nobody navigates a tool they use all day — they memorise positions and stop reading labels after the first week. Four destinations meant four sets of positions to hold in memory, and the retyping was where mistakes entered.

Approach

The four screens collapsed into one console with a fixed layout: scan field always in the same place, current item in the centre, history to the side. Nothing moves between states, because a control that changes position is a control that has to be found again.

Keyboard first. Every action reachable without the mouse, since operators wear gloves and use a handheld scanner that emits keystrokes.

Result

Not measured formally — the team had no timing data before the change, and the number of passes per shift varies too much with inbound volume to compare months. What the operators reported: the retyping is gone, and training a new person now covers one screen instead of four.

Lesson

The gain came from removing navigation, not from redesigning any individual screen. Had the work started as a visual refresh of the four screens, the retyping would have survived it.