Reimagining Inventory Management
Discovery to Jobs To Be Done
Overview
Law enforcement agencies face significant challenges managing their critical equipment inventory - from body cameras and TASERs to vehicles and firearms. As these agencies increasingly rely on technology for daily operations, the complexity of managing this ecosystem of devices has become a critical operational challenge. Axon identified a critical gap: the need for a centralized, adaptable, and user-friendly system that could unify asset management processes while integrating seamlessly into the diverse workflows of public safety agencies.
My role & responsibilities
As the Lead UX, in partnership with my manager and I collaborated with the product team from the start till the end of this project. Time Spent – Approximately 2.5 months. Responsibility:
Drive the product discovery efforts, through mixed methods (Contextual inquiry, semi-structured interviews, desirability study, survey, Buy a feature, usability testing) ensuring that every decision was backed by user insights.
Designed product concepts, and prototyped to conduct Wizard of OZ testing to validate the value of the product.
The project started as a vision sprint, but quickly evolved into a tangible product offering.
Product Impact
90% Increased user adoption intent with positive feedback from concept testing
30% Improved information retrieval speed
Validated product-market fit and got budget approval for MVP scope
The Challenge:
Agencies, ranging from small departments with 35 officers to large organizations with over 33,000 personnel, currently employ a wide range of asset management approaches, from rudimentary paper-based systems to advanced, automated platforms. These varied methods often result in inefficiencies, fragmented workflows, lack of real-time oversight and operational challenges.
How might we empower agencies to seamlessly transition from outdated, manual processes to efficient, automated solutions?
For agencies already using established systems, what would motivate them to adopt new solution?
What value could Axon bring that differentiates itself from existing tools and directly addresses the daily challenges faced by public safety officers and IT administrators?
Research Approach
Given the exploratory nature of the project and our need to understand both current behavior and future opportunities, I designed a 4-phase research approach. The research needed to be both generative and evaluative to uncover gaps in the market, user frustrations with current solutions, and opportunities for differentiation.
Phase 1
Semi-structured user + stakeholder interviews: Allowing for consistent data collection and exploratory discussion
Requirements | Constraints
How they managed their equipment and assets, and what challenges they faced.
Phase 2
Person building: Understand primary and secondary personas: Armorers, Device Managers, IT Administrators, Quartermaster Staff to understand
Competitive Analysis: Evaluating market solutions and identifying opportunity gaps
Workflow mapping
Phase 3
Design: Mid to hi-fidelity wireframes and interactive prototypes
Concept Testing: Validate concepts and help product evaluate the value and identify product market fit.
Phase 4
Surveys: A quantitative survey helped validate some qualitative insights and broadened the scope of feedback beyond direct interviews.
Lastly produce a comprehensive list of Jobs To Be Done for the product manager for the MVP and PRFAQ (Press Release/FAQ format used for product planning)
Discovery Phase One & Two (3 Weeks)
In the discovery phase, our main objective was to immerse ourselves in the lives of potential users.
Gain a better understanding of how agencies currently manage their assets and inventory. This involves examining their existing tools and methodologies, categorization of assets.
Evaluate whether agencies would be interested in having a comprehensive view of all their assets consolidated within a single platform.
Investigate the specific types of notifications and errors agencies frequently encounter and the 3rd party tools they use to fulfil their needs.
Explore the roles and permissions in terms of viewing various kinds of information relevant to asset management.
Who
Research Focus
What
Total of 9 in-depth semi-structured interviews with end-users (3) & stakeholders (6) with sales, CSMs, device managers and armorers.
Competitive analysis of existing solutions
Questions for stakeholders across global markets
Agency configuration and country policy
Devices configuration
Roles and responsibilities
Market competition
Rules and permissions at agency level
Questions for end users
Current processes and pain points
Roles and responsibilities
Device management workflows
Error handling and maintenance
Reporting needs
Key Insights & Artifacts
As we were analyzing data from the qualitative interviews we identified pattern that emerged across several categories.
Agency sizes
Small - mid sized agencies (1-200 officers): Often relied on sergeants/lieutenants managing devices part-time alongside other duties.
Large agencies (8000+ officers): Had dedicated armorers for specific device types.
Differing Needs Between US and International Markets:
Manual Processes Creating Overhead
Inaccurate Check-In/Check-Out Process
Device Tracking and Missing Equipment
“I spend about two hours on this before transitioning to other duties. We don’t have dedicated staff for this.”
“We manage 7,000 TASERs across 33,000 officers. It’s a full-time job just tracking the devices and ensuring proper maintenance.”
Thematic Analysis
A snapshot of the competitive landscape: This analysis evaluates existing armory management solutions currently used by customers, detailing their product offerings, specifications, differentiating features, and competitive angles. By understanding the strengths and limitations of these tools, we identified key opportunities for Axon to address unmet needs and key differentiators .
Meet Lauren, an experienced Armory Manager who oversees the daily management of critical equipment like TASERs, body-worn cameras, and radios. This persona captures the insights derived from semi-structured interviews with end users during the discovery phase. Her responsibilities, pain points, and goals informed key design decisions in developing Axon’s asset management tool.
Concept Validation Phase Three & Four (3 Weeks)
With our initial discovery complete, we moved into concept validation to test our hypotheses about potential solutions...The challenge was complex - we needed to create a system flexible enough to work for agencies of all sizes while allowing granular permission controls and data visibility based on specific agency needs and roles.
I started by conducting an inventory analysis of all software features currently scattered across different parts of Evidence.com (Axon's evidence management platform). Through this exercise, I mapped how different personas performed various tasks and how these needs shifted based on agency size. As I explained to stakeholders, rather than jumping straight to a comprehensive solution, I worked to create key hypotheses around:
Information Architecture: How could we group data to match users' mental models?
Workflow Organization: Could we structure information around equipment lifecycle stages?
Task Prioritization: How might we surface critical errors and maintenance needs?
Exploring different approaches to organize data within the app. These groupings aim to simplify navigation, enhance usability, and support role-based customization, enabling users to access relevant information effortlessly and perform their tasks efficiently.
The diagram highlights the current Axon app architecture and the roles of different personas (Administrator, Armorer, Supervisor, Patrol Officer) in managing device tasks. It showcases existing workflows, permissions, and the integration of various Axon tools like Evidence Sync and Inventory Settings. This analysis informed the design of role-specific dashboards and user permissions tailored to streamline operations for each role, addressing inefficiencies in current workflows.
Prototyping
We created interactive prototypes that were intentionally simple but realistic, focusing on 2-3 core workflows.
"We need to make this feel real enough that users can imagine it in their daily work, but focused enough that we get clear feedback on our core assumptions."
Exploring wireflows and high-fidelity prototypes for user testing, featuring interactive elements and realistic workflows. These prototypes allowed users to explore key features, provide actionable feedback, and validate design decisions.
Concept Testing Approach
We selected 3 armory managers who hadn't participated in our initial research and gave us fresh perspectives while ensuring our participants deeply understood the domain.
We opted for think-aloud testing with the prototypes because it would reveal both usability issues and users' mental models of device management workflows.
What's your ideal snapshot when you first came into work?
How do you monitor assigned vs. returned devices?
Walk me through how you handled device errors today.
A feature prioritization survey was conducted during the final phase of prototyping allowing the users to evaluate the importance of various features and express their willingness to invest in them. The results, visualized through dollar iconography, provided insights into which functionalities users valued most and helped refine the app’s feature set and pricing strategy.
Scale: -5 to +5 with frowning/smiley face on each side indicating their emotion on the numerical scale.
Analysis Process & Synthesis - Prioritization
Our analysis process follows a systematic approach to transforming raw data into actionable insights:
Immediate data processing
Pattern recognition using affinity mapping
"A clear correlation emerged between agency size and process sophistication. Small agencies relied heavily on manual processes, while larger agencies created complex workarounds using multiple systems."
Thematic analysis - Across agency sizes and use cases.
Role-based access: Users strongly desired granular permission control. As one participant explained: "Training coordinators need to see less than system admins. Everyone needs to stay in their lane."
Mobile integration: A surprising insight was the desire for officer self-service through a mobile app. One armorer suggested: "If officers could report device issues directly from their phones, it would save us so much time tracking down problems."
Data refresh rates: Users wanted different refresh rates for different types of data - critical errors needed near-real-time updates, while inventory counts could be updated less frequently.
Cross validation - Triangulation of data
Value testing results and prioritization tests: These structured exercises revealed precisely where agencies spent most of their time and mental energy and what they would like to invest in.
Terminology alignment: Different agencies use different terms for similar concepts. We needed to align with their language or make our terms self-evident.
“This would take care of at least 50% of my concern as far as our technology is getting a good grouping of technology together.” - Bedford PD
This image captures the collaborative analysis session conducted after think-aloud prototype testing, where stakeholders documented user feedback and performed affinity mapping to identify patterns and pain points. The findings were grouped by current system capabilities and areas requiring future development.
This process informed the MVP scope by prioritizing features based on data availability and alignment with user needs, setting the stage for the next steps in roadmap planning and feature implementation.
Concept Validation Impact
Feature prioritization
Real-time device status monitoring identified as highest priority
Error alerting system as critical safety feature
Basic inventory management as a foundation
Business strategy impact
Clear validation of market need
Willingness to pay for specific features
Competitive differentiation opportunities
User experience impact
Reduced cognitive load through consolidated dashboards
Proactive error notification system
Streamlined device management processes
Next Jobs To Be Done (1 Week)
After concept validation I strategically chose the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) to share with the PM as the next path forward as input into PRFAQ project funding. JTBD were
Progress-Focused vs. Solution-Focused
Solution-Agnostic
Measurable Outcomes
JTBD focused on the core progress users want to make, rather than just feature requests. As Clayton Christensen notes in his Jobs Theory, people don't buy products; they "hire" them to help them make progress in specific circumstances.
I structured our JTBD list into 5 key categories.
Goal - Structure key jobs for MVP
This was particularly relevant to our asset management solution, as one armorer explained.
"We're not just trying to track devices - we're trying to prevent failures in the field, ensure officer safety, and maintain department accountability."
Overall Impact & Next Steps
The concept validation and JTBD framework ultimately served as a bridge between user research and product development, helping transform our rich qualitative insights into actionable development requirements while maintaining focus on user outcomes rather than specific features.
This JTBD approach resonated well with product management for several reasons:
PRFAQ alignment
Jobs directly mapped to user benefits
Clear connection between user needs and business value
Easy to justify development investment
MVP scoping
Clear prioritization of the most important jobs
Natural grouping of related capabilities
Framework for measuring success
These resources gave product confident to start working towards highest-impact features first:
Real-time device status monitoring
Error alerting system
Basic inventory management
Long-term strategy impact
Platform evolution
Market positioning
Partnership opportunities
Lessons Learned
As I reflect on this asset management discovery project, it stands out as a uniquely valuable learning experience that pushed me to grow both as a researcher and strategic thinker.
Key Success
Vision sprint innovation: The project's structure as a vision sprint created space for methodological experimentation often constrained in hardware-focused projects.
Greenfield opportunity: Working on a net-new software product, rather than iterating on existing hardware.
Cross-functional collaboration: The project pushed me beyond my usual hardware team boundaries.
Areas for Growth
Stakeholder engagement strategy: While the research execution was strong, I see opportunities to improve stakeholder management like earlier engagement with senior leadership and more frequent executive touchpoints.
A key learning was that robust research isn't enough - you need to actively build and maintain executive support throughout the process.
Research methodology expansion: Although our remote interviews were effective, I identified several methods like dairy studies and longitudinal studies to track behavior patterns that could have deepened our insights.
Cross-pillar collaboration: The project highlighted the importance of early alignment across organizational boundaries.
Lastly, this project has fundamentally shaped how I think about research leadership. It has pushed me to consider not just to product quality insights, but to build the organizational support needed to act on them.