--case-mango-auraB2E · Enterprise · 2023 – now
MANGO AURA.
AURA is the internal product behind mango.com, where the global catalog gets published and managed. I lead the product design team behind it: one tool where teams complete whole workflows, instead of jumping between legacy tools.
- Less time per task
- Fewer errors
- A strategic view
- Deeper market opportunities
- Role
- Senior Product Designer · leads the internal tools design team
- Team
- 3 product designers + 1 design system designer
- Timeline
- 2023 – now
- Users
- Internal teams (B2E), across markets
Fig. 1 · B2E · Enterprise
My role
I lead the product design team behind MANGO Online's internal B2E tools.
Working across the whole network of MANGO Online squads and the Design System domain.
- 01
Discovery, journeys and flows for internal users, mapped with people from executive level to daily operators.
- 02
AURA as its own design entity inside MANGO's design system: a dedicated space where new components are designed when new needs appear.
- 03
Continuous testing with internal users, validating concepts from the earliest stages.
- 04
Usage data and feedback to back design decisions, including which features to retire.
TeamBuilt with product managers and engineering. Product decisions are shared with product and business.
Context
AURA is the internal tool behind mango.com. It centralizes hundreds of features of the online store in one place: products, attributes, visibility, availability and the rules that change from one market to another.
Many roles, many countries and many logistics setups rely on it every day. It isn't optional software. If it's slow or confusing, the cost shows up in every task, every day.
- Legacy
Legacy services and databases that didn't talk to each other.
- Many teams
Teams across Online, Retail, Operations and Supply, each with its own priorities.
- Mandatory use
A tool people must use, so every bit of friction becomes daily lost time.
Problem
It started with the visual merchandising teams and their daily workflows. The first job was the most urgent one: critical errors in production, each of them expensive for the business.
Behind the errors sat the real problem. Legacy services, old software and several tools just to complete one flow, each built with its own logic. Every jump between tools was a chance to make a mistake, and much of the day went to manual operations with little value for the people doing them.
The problem wasn't a bad screen. It was that no one could see the whole journey.
Key decisions
- 01
Understand the business before the solution.
We mapped real workflows and the real problems behind them, from executive level to daily contributors, before designing any screen. The costliest problem came first.
trade-off: A slower start, and far fewer surprises later.
- 02
Complete flows, not one manager per feature.
Instead of a new manager for every need, as before, one tool that handles whole workflows without leaving it. The cost lived in the gaps between tools, not inside them.
trade-off: A longer path to the first visible release, and information architecture work before any screen.
- 03
Remove the work that adds no value.
Workflows improved with Amplified Intelligence (AI) assistance, and the purely operational, manual tasks removed, so people spend their time on the work their role is for.
- 04
Market fit, not one setup for every customer.
Region and country granularity inside the same tool: product visibility and promotion adapted to each market, instead of the same standard configuration for everyone. A large technical project in its own right, including how the web's menus and product listings are managed.
Craft
One flow, end to end: from publishing a product to its visibility on the web. Before, it meant a chain of separate tools; now it's one place, with the commercial context inside the flow.
Real screens are confidential. This flow is a simplified representation with no internal data.
Outcome
Less time per task
The whole journey lives in one tool.
Fewer errors
No more copying data between systems.
A strategic view
Of how and when the web catalog gets published.
Deeper market opportunities
Visibility and promotion tuned to each market's fit, instead of one standard setup.
Reflection
Usage data also shows what to stop maintaining. We retired the features almost nobody used.