B2B · FULLY IMPLEMENTED
Centralizing furniture donation, inventory, and delivery operations
Duration: 9 months (Sep 2025 - May 2026)
Role: Product designer
Team: 3 designers, 7 engineers, 2 PMs, 2 tech leads
Skills: Prototyping, User testing, XFN collaboration, Client collaboration
As a part of a cross-functional team, I designed a centralized operations platform for Journey Home, a nonprofit working to end homelessness in Connecticut. Through weekly meetings with the organization, we developed a platform that brings together inventory management, donor intake, client requests, volunteer scheduling, deliveries, pickups, and user management into one system.
Rather than completely replacing their existing tools, the goal of this project was to make their current workflow easier to manage; the resulting system was designed around the needs of administrators, case managers, and volunteers, with an emphasis on flexibility.
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Journey Home needed one place to coordinate the many moving parts behind furniture distribution.
Furniture moved through several interconnected stages:
Donation -> Review -> Inventory -> Client request -> Fulfillment -> Pickup/delivery
However, each step involved different people, information, decisions, and disconnected platforms, including Smartsheet, Excel, Outlook, and signup.com. This created additional work for staff.
Research highlights
Information was distributed
Because donor offers, client requests, inventory, and schedules were separated across different tools, staff had to manually piece together information to understand their next step. Manual coordination also increased the possibility of missed or outdated information.
Lack of inventory management
Journey Home had no method to figure out what items they had in stock, forcing them to call their warehouse manager to manually count items when needed.
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
This centralized platform connects Journey Home’s furniture workflow from intake to delivery.
Rather than designing each dashboard independently, we mapped the workflows of Journey Home’s four primary user groups and identified the interactions between them.
User flows of donors, admin, case managers, volunteers
Mapping these workflows helped us see where information and responsibility moved between roles. For example, a case manager’s request would require an admin to verify the request, identify suitable inventory, and coordinate volunteers before a delivery could take place. These handoffs became important points of focus as we designed.
Broad workflow
1. Donor: Submits furniture available for donation
2. Administrator: Reviews donations
3. Case manager: Submits and tracks furniture requests for clients
4. Administrator: Reviews requests
5. Administrator: Coordinates fulfillment for donors and case managers
6. Volunteer: Signs up for shifts and records pickups and deliveries
1. Donor: Submits furniture available for donation
2. Administrator: Reviews donations
3. Case manager: Submits and tracks furniture requests for clients
4. Administrator: Reviews requests
5. Administrator: Coordinates fulfillment for donors and case managers
6. Volunteer: Signs up for shifts and records pickups and deliveries
Donors submit furniture and admins review
Admins needed greater control over what entered their inventory because donor submissions could not automatically become available items. We therefore designed a manual donation review where admins can accept or reject submissions before accepted donations move into the pickup workflow.
Donors fill out the form, noting each item they wish to give to Journey Home
Admin can approve or deny specific items within a request and view the donor's provided information
Case managers request items and admins review
Case managers needed visibility into their clients' requests, while admins needed a way to verify the client’s HMIS number and coordinate requests before fulfillment. We therefore separated the case manager and administrative experiences while keeping requests connected within the same system.
Case managers submit client information, request items, and view the status on their personal dashboard
Admin can approve or deny requests and can add notes based on inventory availability
Admins coordinate fulfillment
Admins previously coordinated volunteer availability, pickups, and deliveries across multiple tools and communication platforms. We therefore consolidated these workflows into scheduling and volunteer management tools, giving admins a centralized view of upcoming pickups, deliveries, and volunteer availability.
Admins can preview and change inventory before scheduling shifts
After scheduling pickups/deliveries, the master schedule showcases all shifts and details
Volunteers complete the handoff
Volunteers needed to record pickups and deliveries without having access to the broader administrative system. We therefore designed a step-by-step day-of workflow that guides volunteers through their tasks and limits inventory editing to the active day of their shift.
Volunteer sign-up page
Volunteer shift tasks page
KEY DESIGN DECISIONS
Our design decisions evolved through ongoing feedback, helping us create a system that was both useful for Journey Home and realistic to implement.
Realistic maintenance
Our original concept was intended to give admins a detailed view of every piece of furniture moving through the organization. However, this introduced a new problem: the system would only be useful if staff consistently maintained that information. After discussing their existing workflow with admins, we realized that asking them to track details they did not already collect would create additional work rather than reduce it. We therefore simplified the system to focus on inventory categories and quantities.
Early sketches of the inventory dashboard
Old high-fidelity prototype of the inventory dashboard
System flexibility
Journey Home’s inventory, users, and workflows will continue to grow. New types of furniture may need to be added, users may change roles, and information may need to be corrected. We therefore designed for all these possibilities by making most features personalizable. Admin can create and modify inventory categories, edit quantities, manage user permissions, modify scheduling information, review and revert changes through the changelog.
Inventory category edits, including name, icon, and threshold
Change log that tracks every warehouse inventory addition or removal
Role-specific access
The user flows revealed that different people interacted with the system in very different ways. Admin needed broad control over inventory and users while volunteers needed to complete specific tasks without access to administrative functionality. We therefore focused on role-specific experiences rather than exposing every capability to each user type.
REFLECTION AND CONCLUSION
This project changed how I think about designing for complex organizational systems.
Designing for the real workflow, not the ideal
This project taught me that designing for complex organizations requires balancing an ideal product vision with what users can realistically maintain. I learned to treat maintainability as a design constraint rather than an implementation detail: a simpler system that remains accurate can be more valuable than a more comprehensive one that users cannot sustain.
Designing as part of a cross-functional team
Because the platform was being developed alongside our design process, I had to work closely with engineers and tech leads to make sure our designs were being translated effectively into the product. This meant communicating interaction details, clarifying edge cases, and checking that the implementation decisions reflected the original designs. There were times when we had to revisit our original concepts and discuss its feasibility with engineering. I learned that good cross-functional collaboration is more than handing the designs off; it is an ongoing process of communication and iteration.
Future goals
If I had more time, I would conduct additional usability testing with each user group, particularly volunteers who interact with the platform more differently than the admins. Though we learned a lot from our weekly meetings with Journey Home, additional testing could provide more unique insight.
