Buyer App — Globalfair
A native-feel cross-border buyer experience for a US-based building-materials marketplace.
Before a single pixel.
Discovery, framing, structure and validation — the work that decided what the screens had to be.
- 01Discover
Follow the buyer, not the process
Interviews with US procurement leads and warehouse visits to see where connectivity and patience actually break.
Remote interviewsField visitsJourney mapping - 02Define
Four steps is the ceiling
Quantified drop-off across the legacy 14-step flow and set a hard structural constraint for the redesign.
Funnel analysisDesign constraintsProblem framing - 03Structure
Hide complexity in defaults
Modelled freight, tariffs and lead times as smart, overridable defaults instead of user-facing forms.
Task flowsDefault logic modelOffline state model - 04Ideate
Native-first sketches
Separate iOS and Android explorations so neither platform inherited the other's conventions.
WireframesPlatform pattern studyInteraction sketches - 05Validate
Test where the Wi-Fi fails
Three prototype rounds run on-site in warehouses, including deliberate offline scenarios.
On-site prototype testingOffline scenario testsCompletion metrics
Straight from the source.
Live captures of the shipped product and the design files behind it.
The brief.
Cross-border procurement is paperwork dressed up as commerce. The buyer app strips that down to a flow that feels like ordering coffee — and quietly handles tariffs, lead times, and freight under the hood.
US buyers wanted Indian manufacturing without the complexity. The old web flow had 14 steps, three logins, and a PDF. We needed mobile-first, single-thread, no surprises.
Talking to real users.
- ✦Remote interviews (US buyers)
- ✦Journey mapping
- ✦Prototype testing on-site
- ✦Field visits to warehouses
11 US procurement buyers · 4 warehouse managers · 3 freight partners
4 weeks discovery + 3 rounds of prototype testing
"If I can't quote it in one screen, I go back to email."
"Half my day the Wi-Fi is a suggestion. The app has to survive that."
How the study actually ran — four frames from field to evidence.
On-site with buyers
Observed procurement work happening in warehouses, not at a desk.
Trust before price
Buyers explained they need supplier proof long before they compare numbers.
Native-first flows
Separate iOS and Android sketches so neither inherited the other's patterns.
Test where Wi-Fi fails
Prototype rounds run on-site, including deliberate offline scenarios.
- Insight 01
Buyers price in trust
Every hidden fee killed a returning order. Transparent totals were table-stakes.
- Insight 02
Offline-first isn't optional
Any friction at scan-time got the app deleted. Queue-and-sync saved retention.
- Insight 03
Four steps is the ceiling
Above four form steps, completion collapsed. We rebuilt to fit under it.
How it came together.
- 01
Mapped the buyer's decision moments — not the company's process — and designed around those.
- 02
Hid complexity in defaults: smart freight, smart tariffs, smart timelines, all overridable.
- 03
Designed an offline-first state model for spotty warehouse Wi-Fi.
- 04
Native components only, no cross-platform shortcuts — it had to feel local on both OSes.