UI Re-Design of a B2B Marketplace helping Businesses fight Supply Chain Issues during COVID Lockdowns
UI Design · UX Research · Prototyping · E-Commerce
PRODUCT OVERVIEW
COVID lockdowns disrupted supply chains across the world, leaving local retailers unable to get what they needed from their usual suppliers. R2RS emerged as a retailer-to-retailer marketplace, giving traders a way to buy, sell, and bid on stock directly with each other. The app streamlined stock management, bulk orders, and let retailers track performance in one place.
TIMELINE
2 Months
ROLE
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UI Designer collaborating with a lead designer, developer, and product experts on a 1-month UI modernization.
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Conducted a UX audit and connected with local retailers facing COVID supply challenges understand real user needs.
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Created wireframes and prototypes to simplify onboarding, bulk orders, bidding, and dashboards.
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Refined the app’s visual design in Figma and Photoshop, improving usability for retailers new to e-commerce.
TOOLS
Adobe XD, Photoshop, Illustrator
PROBLEM
When COVID lockdowns hit India, retailers were left stranded, some with stock piling up cut off from customers, others with empty shelves cut off from suppliers.
Supply chains had collapsed, and with no reliable way to forecast demand, traders were forced into fragmented workarounds: endless phone calls, scattered WhatsApp groups, and middlemen who slowed things down. The result was:
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Retailers with unsellable stock had no channel to offload it.
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Retailers with empty shelves had no way to restock quickly.
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Small businesses wasted time and money navigating broken networks.
R2RS set out to solve this by creating a single marketplace where retailers could directly buy, sell, and bid on lots, attempting to restore some stability during a time of disruption.
THE USERS
The people who used R2RS were just people fearing for their livelihoods trying to survive the shutdown.
To identify the key archetypes we were designing for, I did the below research:
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Spoke directly with local retailers in my area facing the same COVID supply issues.
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Interviewed the R2RS founders to understand their vision and how early adopters were struggling on the app.
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Reviewed blogs and news reports covering how small traders in India were hit hardest by supply chain collapse.
This research helped us surface three clear user groups that guided the redesign.
Across these groups, the pattern was the same: retailers didn’t care about shiny features. They wanted an app that was simple, trustworthy, and quick. A tool that reduced friction so they could focus on keeping their businesses alive during a time of extreme uncertainty.
OUR VISION
The pandemic had left retailers juggling uncertainty and survival. The vision for the R2RS's redesign was simple: create an app that felt trustworthy, beginner-friendly, and efficient, so retailers could focus on running their shops and not fighting the interface.
We shaped this vision around three design principles:
These principles became our compass. Every decision from simplifying dashboards to redesigning onboarding was filtered through them, ensuring the app met retailers where they were in a moment of crisis.
THE PROCESS
We followed an iterative process through an initial UX audit, discovery, design, and testing with each stage shaped by stakeholder feedback.
We began by auditing the existing app and mapping out where users struggled most. Conversations with local retailers and founders highlighted issues in onboarding, cluttered dashboards, and confusing bidding flows. From there, the team worked together on finalizing the core journeys through collaborative wireframing, giving us a shared blueprint for how the app should work.
With the flows in place, we moved into prototyping. Using Adobe XD, I prototyped the redesigned screens that focused on beginner-friendly onboarding, cleaner dashboards, and simplified bidding/ordering. These were iterated quickly with feedback from founders and stakeholders and quickly moved up in fidelity.
Finally, I conducted lightweight usability walkthroughs with test users to validate flows and catch navigation friction. This testing surfaced small adjustments in labeling, button placement, and visual hierarchy. Once refined, the prototypes were handed off to the developer with clear design specifications for build.
OUTCOMES
Working on R2RS during the pandemic reminded me that design is often less about innovation and more about something far more base. This project taught me how to design under extreme constraints: a one-month timeline, a distributed, remote team, and users navigating uncertainty day by day. It showed me the value of keeping things simple, beginner-friendly, and grounded in real user voices. That lesson continues to shape how I approach design today.
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