iTracefresh

All In One Traceability Solution

I led a redesign of the labeling workflow and the surrounding traceability experience to make the product easier to use and more valuable to growers.

Role Lead Designer
Team Product Manager, Lead Software Engineer, +6 Offshore Development Team
Responsibilities Research, information architecture, wireframing, usability testing, UI design, and design system
Two phone mockups of the iTracefresh mobile app: an Add a Buyer form and the multi-step Create Item Label printing flow.
Business Impact
12% reduction in customer churn
58% reduction in labor hours spent creating and printing labels
82 SUS score, up from 68 in the legacy flow
01

The Challenge: From Fragmented Tools to One Platform

iTracefresh had valuable traceability capabilities, but customers experienced them as disconnected tools. The most-used workflow, creating labels, was slow to learn and costly to operate, while lower-priced competitors offered a more coherent end-to-end product.

01

A weak product proposition

Customers could find cheaper alternatives, while iTracefresh’s stronger capabilities felt scattered across separate modules. This made it difficult for customers to understand the value of paying more.

02

A difficult core workflow

Creating labels was the most-used workflow, yet it was slow, error-prone, and difficult for new users to learn. This friction affected onboarding, daily operations, and support.

03

A constrained redesign

The redesign needed to preserve operational familiarity, meet PTI and FSMA traceability requirements, and avoid disrupting active work for growers and packing crews.

02

What Success Looked Like

Design goals diagram centered on improved UX/UI, connecting to improving task success, reducing errors, increasing user satisfaction, centralizing solutions under one platform, and decreasing customer support tickets.
03

Research in the Field

In The Field With Harvest Crews

Spent a day on-site at a California Giant Berry Farm observing and interviewing harvest and operations teams to understand the real-world workflow. Because subject-matter expert time was limited, I used field observation, focused interviews, and workflow mapping to make each research session count.

Ramin observing a harvest crew and operations team in a strawberry field during contextual inquiry. Packing line workers boxing strawberries in a packing facility. Harvest crew picking strawberries across long rows in the field. Wide view of the strawberry field where the contextual inquiry took place.

Who We Were Designing For

Our customers' pain points were our opportunities. Our interviews helped us uncover the path to our goals.

What The Journey Mapping Revealed

Workflow mapping revealed two major time sinks:

  • 5 hrs — Packing & prepping product
  • 1.5 hrs — Palletizing & labeling

These tasks consumed 6.5 hours of the shift, exposing significant workflow friction. A lack of real-time visibility left crews guessing about supplies, progress, and quotas—while operations teams lacked timely insight into production and quality issues.

What The Competitive Landscape Confirmed

iTracefresh wasn't behind on capability. It held features most competitors didn't but those solutions were scattered across separate, disconnected modules, while competitors like Procurant and Famous ERP won on being one unified system.

Feature iTracefresh iFoodDS / HarvestMark Famous Software FoodLogiQ Procurant
PTI printing ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Item-level trace ✓ ✓ — — —
Palletized ASN ✓ — ✓ ✓ —
Mobile printing (Android) ✓ — ✓ — ✓
Offline mobile printing ✓ — — — —
HPL printing ✓ — ✓ — —
Item lookup tool ✓ — — — —
Lot aggregator (coming soon) ✓ — ✓ ✓ —
04

Designing One Connected Traceability Experience

Research showed that iTracefresh did not lack capability; it lacked a connected experience. I focused the redesign on making core labeling faster, bringing related workflows into one product structure, and giving growers clearer tools to manage customer engagement and recall events.

01

Unify the product structure

Research signalCustomers had to move between disconnected modules to complete related tasks.
Design decisionSo I unified the navigation to make the platform easier to find and understand.
02

Make label creation the core workflow

Research signalLabel creation was the most-used but most frustrating workflow.
Design decisionSo I introduced a guided wizard that reduced clicks while preserving the steps experienced users already understood.
03

Extend value beyond compliance

Research signalGrowers needed more than compliance labeling.
Design decisionSo I connected brand and recall tools to the same traceability data, creating more value without disrupting the core workflow.

One connected product

Label Management

Validated core workflow

Brand Management

Customer engagement extension

Recall Management

Safety and response extension
05

Final End-to-End Label Solution

Label Management

Create and find PTI, hybrid pallet, and SSCC labels in one place. Guided creation, scanning and activation, and trace summary reporting carry the workflow from setup through tracking.

app.itracefresh.com
Label list view showing PTI, hybrid pallet, and SSCC labels with their product description, lot number, and date created. Create PTI Label wizard showing the pack date, product info, tracking info, printing options, and finalize print steps. Create Hybrid Pallet Label flow with the Add Product panel for entering product, lot, and pallet details. Activate Item Labels step showing scanned item codes, total scans, and total unique products. Trace Summary Report showing ship-from and ship-to locations on a map alongside totals for products, sales, and customers.
06

Comparing Legacy With the New Solution

Objective

Test legacy iTracefresh application against the new designed solution for creating labels.

Methodology

Conducted unmoderated usability testing through a 3rd party application on UserZoom.

Participation

18 participants completed the legacy test and 12 completed the prototype test.

UserZoom test session card for the legacy (Web App) iTracefresh Test: 18 of 40 completes. UserZoom test session card for the new (Prototype 1 - Wizard) iTracefresh Test: 12 of 40 completes.
Benchmark Results
11% decrease in the time it takes to print labels
14 percentage-point increase in success rate for printing labels
52% increase in page views to print a label
58% decrease in clicks to print a label
8% increase in user satisfaction
07

From Label Creation to a Connected Traceability Platform

Brand Management

Configure brand templates with a live preview, then review scan trends, customer feedback, and performance across brands in the overview and dashboard.

Research signal

Growers wanted their branding to carry beyond the warehouse to the moment a customer engages with the product.

Design response

Self-service template configuration supports branded web and mobile experiences.

Key features

Live template preview · Brand overview · Cross-brand dashboard

app.itracefresh.com
Brand Template Creation configuration screen with a brand, product, and ranch selected, showing the live preview populated with real content. Brand Overview page showing scan trends, feedback breakdown, and most common review phrases for a single brand. Brand Dashboard showing most-scanned locations, overall scan trend across all brands, and a table comparing activated labels, scans, and scan rate per brand.

Recall Management

Create and monitor recall events in one place. The flow brings together guided setup, customer notifications, progress and impact tracking, and attachments for the response.

Research signal

Growers needed a way to respond quickly to food-borne illnesses or contamination events.

Design response

A centralized recall flow brings event setup, notifications, status tracking, and attachments together.

Key features

Recall dashboard · Guided event creation · Notifications · Status tracking · Attachments

app.itracefresh.com
Recall Management list view showing active recalls with their status, event type, and percent completed. Create Recall Event wizard, Step 1: entering the event name, recall type, and summary. Start Recall Event notification step showing the scheduled recall warning message template. Recall status dashboard showing 100% completed location progress, time elapsed, and a product loss summary. Recall attachments tab showing DC and store attachments collected per customer.
08

What This Project Taught Me

Redesigning iTracefresh taught me that improving an operational product required more than modernizing its interface. I needed to understand the work in context, prioritize the workflow with the greatest customer impact, and connect existing capabilities into a more coherent product.

  1. Observe the work where it happens

    Watching harvest and operations teams in the field showed me that labeling was only one step within a time-sensitive physical workflow. Seeing that environment helped me design around real constraints instead of assumptions.

  2. Improve the core workflow first

    Label creation was the most-used feature and a major source of customer frustration. Prioritizing and validating that workflow gave the broader product redesign a measurable foundation.

  3. Modernize without disrupting expertise

    Experienced crews already understood the concepts and sequence behind label creation. The redesign added guidance, visible progress, and automation while preserving the familiar structure users relied on.

  4. Product value comes from connection

    iTracefresh already had strong capabilities, but they were scattered across separate modules. Connecting labeling, brand engagement, and recall response around shared traceability data created a clearer and more valuable product experience.

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