Juntos | rohremala

Connecting Vendors to Bids, Constructing Success

Team

Rohitha Remala,

Sanjana Kothapalli,

Arundhati Tiwari

Roles

Visual Designer

KMV wanted to create a 2-way marketplace for buyers and sellers to bid on construction materials and services. KMV Constructions is a leading engineering and construction company offering tech and engineering services throughout India with headquarters in Hyderabad, India. The bid management tool being designed is intended for construction managers and SPOCs (buyers) to efficiently place bids on materials and services provided by vendors (sellers) within the construction sector.

Role and Responsibilities

As an Independent UX/UX Designer on the team, my core responsibilities were to :

Build the various UI Components, modules, templates and elements of the Application according to the brand guidelines and visual style.
Consolidate all the UI patterns into a sticker sheet for the design team to build wireframes
During the implementation phase I worked on developing the high fidelity prototypes - specifically working on interactions and error cases

My role also included closely collaborating with engineering to make design production ready and streamline the handoff.

Project Timeline

The design team was approached with a business idea for implementation and tasked with a 3-week design sprint. During this sprint, we were onboarded to build out screens based on the business brief provided to us. Consequently, we did not need to conduct any foundational research, as we were creating solutions for a specific use case: the bid management application tool being launched by KMV Constructions. Additionally, the application interface we created was a component of the larger vendor management system.

Understanding the Business Use Case

Construction material bids are proposals from suppliers to provide specific materials for construction projects at set prices. In the current market, bids are largely human-operated. KMV’s business idea was to automate certain areas of the bidding process through the app. For the vendor management tool, the main focus was to automate bidding, negotiation, and approval of bids — which is critical because manual bidding often delays access to materials, causes bottlenecks in project timelines, and leaves room for budget overruns due to inconsistent evaluations and overlooked details. Automation ensures bids are processed instantly, reduces costly human errors in pricing and scope, and keeps projects on budget by flagging discrepancies in real time.

3 main things the app targets to automate are

Process of bidding
Negotiation with the vendor
Documenting negotiations, revisions, and updates made

Users

SPOC/Admin

Construction Manager

Vendors/Sellers

Material Manufactures

The Application would be a standalone app on Play Store/App Store, primary used by Construction Manager, Single Point of Contact person's, Admins, and Vendors. We analyzed KMV data on users and vendors on their files, leading to the following insights :

All communications happen via telephone calls, with
no documentation on agreements and negotiation history.

Vendors struggle to list all their products and prices for bidding, as construction managers often reorder the same product from a single vendor and seek others for different products.
There isn't a single repository for logging ASN/PO documents.

An Advance Shipment Notice (ASN) is an electronic alert sent by a supplier to a buyer before shipping goods, detailing the delivery. It includes:

- Product descriptions
- Quantities
- Expected delivery date
- Carrier information
- Packaging details
- Configuration of goods

Every order requires at least one ASN generated by the vendor. The ASN allows intermediaries like truck drivers and warehouse managers to view shipment details without revealing billing information. Currently, ASN creation for new vendors is a manual process, but future versions of the application will automate this task.

Goal Statement

The vendor interface for the Bid management app - Juntos, (what is the product)

will let construction material vendors to engage with Construction managers autonomously for making and coordinating bids. (perform action)

Which will provide a single interface for vendors which facilitates documentation and gives autonomy to vendors.

(how?)

Design the User interface, interactions, and have them ready for engineering to build a fully working prototype,

in 3 weeks. (how do we measure success?)

Design System & Components

Once the site app architecture was refined, we established our base Design Language System (DLS) and conducted rapid wireframing using select DLS components for initial feedback. After incorporating the feedback, I was tasked with building the comprehensive design system for the application, including over 50 unique components and their variants, while the rest of the team focused on creating various flows and screens using the DLS.

Feedback

Throughout the design phase, we provided daily feedback, allocated time for live revisions, and held brief calls with the client and their engineering team to gather input.

Iterations

The second week of the sprint was dedicated to running focus groups to debug design issues alongside the engineering team, prototyping interactions, and preparing wireframes for development. At the request of the development team, we also focused on cleaning up the designs and converting them into tokens for the Engineering Design file.

Testing

Given that the foundational research provided clear findings and set priorities, our testing focused on two key questions: Did our design meet the business requirements, and can engineering implement it with ease?

Checking off tasks from the business plan
Implementing ad hoc feedback from engineering
Checking components and interactions for streamlining development

High Fidelity Prototypes

Vendors now have the autonomy to select bids directly, streamlining a process that was previously tedious and handled through phone calls for coordination and negotiation.

Revisions document all changes made by the vendor or client(construction manager) to the bid

Term and conditions allow for nuance agreements to be accountable

ASNs and POs, along with their PDF copies, are retained in a searchable and retrievable historical repository, allowing for easy download.

Handoff

A Figma file was handed off, including a design library with reusable components and user flows for the vendor interface. The handoff also provided access to design guidelines and visual styles ready for migration to CSS root, a sticker sheet with development-ready UI components and their variants -

and implementation guidelines detailing interactions and flows -

Outcomes

We accelerated development and reduced time to production by closely collaborating with the engineering and development teams., through a scalable design and Design system.
Developed 100+ UI elements, including variants, statuses, and interactions. Which were used to build the interactive flows, shared with the development team.
Reduced engineering work time by two days by providing developer-ready handoffs and tokenizing UI components.
I learned to change and adjust to the design process and sprint according to a shorter and tighter timeline while working as an independent contributor resource in close collaboration with engineering.