Overview
Managing just one order for my family, making sure we get everything we want, tracking shipments, and handling payments, can already feel overwhelming. I can't imagine managing over 100 orders while juggling deadlines, messages, payments, and unexpected issues. Yet Group Order Managers do this every day, often relying on spreadsheets, Notion, and Instagram DMs to keep it all together.
Problem
What is a GO?
Have you ever split a bulk order with friends to save on shipping? That's the essence of a Group Order. In global fandoms, especially K-pop, GOs let international fans pool orders and share shipping costs while getting access to merchandise that may otherwise be difficult to buy.
Who are GOMs?
But behind every successful GO is a Group Order Manager. GOMs act as the middleman between suppliers and hundreds of individual buyers, managing payments, merchandise, shipping addresses, updates, and questions, all while trying to maintain trust within their community.
The Challenge
There isn't really a tool built around how they actually work. Instead, GOMs piece together spreadsheets, Notion pages, Google Forms, Instagram DMs, Venmo, Zelle, and whatever else gets the job done, for a single order.
How might we make managing a group order easier without losing the flexibility and personal connection that makes GOMs successful?
Understanding GOMS
Research: Before designing anything, we needed to understand what managing a GO actually looks like. We interviewed two GOMs: one experienced, with 4+ years running GOs and 150–200 joiners per order, and one newer, with 1+ year of experience and 15–30 joiners per order. We also shadowed one GOM's live workflow, from collecting orders to managing shipping.
Findings: Both GOMs relied heavily on Google Sheets or Notion to maintain their master-lists, manually updating information as orders progressed. But the biggest challenge wasn't simply organization, it was keeping everything, and everyone, up to date.
Findings
Communication at Scale
Small GOs can lean on group chats, but larger orders make constant manual updates impossible.
Joiner Mistakes
Incorrect payments or shipping info can lead to delays, and GOMs sometimes cover the cost themselves.
Scattered Information
GOMs jump between multiple platforms just to manage payments, orders, shipping, and communication.
GOM + Joiner needs
GOMs need control
- Orders
- Payments
- Shipping
- Claims
- Communication
Joiners need clarity
- View their orders
- Check payment status
- Update Information
- Track Shipping
- Receive important Updates
The solution needed to work for both sides --> detailed enough for GOMs, but simple enough for joiners.
Competitive Analysis
| Tool | What Worked | What Was Missing |
|---|---|---|
| Notion | Flexible organization, real-time updates | Too customizable, lacks payment and order features |
| Google Sheets | Familiar, accessible, handles lots of data | Manual updates, overwhelming for joiners |
| Google Forms | Easy order collection, Sheets integration | No automatic invoicing or payment tracking |
| GOMDrop | All-in-one order management | Limited flexibility and editing |
The gap wasn't another spreadsheet. GOMs needed a system that brought organization, communication, and payment management together.
Design Goals
Based on our research, we focused on the two moments where GOMs experienced the most friction, managing the order itself, and managing payments & shipping once it was underway.
Exploring the Solution
Flow 1: Order management
The GOM creates an order form that automatically syncs with their master-list, letting joiners update their own info while the GOM keeps control of the order.
Flow 2: Payments & Shipping
Once shipping costs are finalized, the system calculates fees, sends payment requests, and lets joiners confirm or update their information.
Sketches
This was one of my favorite parts of the project, exploring different ways to solve the same problem through sketches and early interface concepts. We carried over familiar patterns from tools like Notion and Google Sheets, but redesigned them specifically around how GOMs actually work.
Wireframes
Our first wireframes centered around three key areas, with a separate flow for mass payment reminders and shipping updates.
Flow #1:
Dashboard: A quick overview of order statuses, notifications, deadlines, joiners, and payments.
Orders: A centralized space to organize group orders and access templates.
Master-list: An automatically updated database where GOMs could still make manual edits when needed.
Lo-fi Testing
We tested our lo-fi prototype with an experienced GOM. The feedback showed us that some of our assumptions didn't match how GOMs actually worked, and that turned out to be one of the most useful parts of the whole project.
What Worked
- At-a-glance order summaries
- Organizing joiner information
- Exporting specific details
- Letting joiners edit responses
- Mass payment reminders
What did NOT Work
Templates → filters
Our preset order templates were interpreted as filtering options by the stakeholder testing them.
Status mismatch
“Open,” “In Progress,” and “Completed” didn’t reflect how GOMs actually manage an order’s lifecycle.
Buried reminder
The payment reminder feature was useful, but its placement in the interface wasn’t intuitive.
Changes
1. Making templates more like templates
2. Giving GOMs an overview
3. Making reminders easier to find
Reflection
Designing for a community I knew very little about.
This project pushed me into a completely new space. Before this, I knew very little about group order managers or the work that goes into organizing a GO. I had to quickly learn how this community operates and design around a workflow that was completely unfamiliar to me.
What I enjoyed most was being able to explore different solutions and then use real user feedback to challenge them. Testing showed me that something that made sense to me as a designer didn't always make sense to the person actually using it.
This project pushed me to become more adaptable in my process, and reinforced how important it is to design with users, rather than just for them.