Difox — Runners Personal Assistant. Case Study
In 2017, I got a chance to manage a fintech project, where we faced a thrilling and challenging problem to design an app that empathized with hard-working delivery partners. The app needed a scalable design system that meets the delivery partner’s needs and customer service quality.
The major challenge was that the product users do not come from a solid educational & technical background. But the responsibility was immense, representing the organization to the customer, and the documents that were picked and dropped by the delivery executives were confidential. Below is the design process that I followed to design a SMART Runner application.
1. Empathising Phase:
To serve the customers with the highest satisfaction and quality, we provided Runners with tools and services that enabled them to do their job effectively with excellent customer experience.
An app that allows runners to find routes to customer address & then pick a required document from customers along with quality validations. Once on the field, runners should be able to complete maximum work in bare minimum time.
Before jumping off directly to solutions, it was better to understand “when” and “where” the app would be used and the challenges currently faced by the users.
- When: I assumed that the Runners would use the app during working hours. The working shift may differ; some may use it during the day, while others may use it during the late evening in exceptional cases.
- Where: Runners mostly use this app, probably while riding to different pick-up and delivery locations on their motorbikes to get accurate instructions.
The device could be company-provided or personal. In both cases, it had to be Android, specifically Samsung. It is cheap and readily available on Indian markets. Hence, I designed it as per Android specifications.
2. Defining Audience:
We divided the Runners audience into two main groups :
1. First time enrolled Runners: Who completed their enrolment to service
2. Experienced Runners: Who were part of the pick-up service for a while (~6 jobs per day)
Both had similar motivations but slightly different needs. More introductory guidance was needed for the first time enrolled drivers and more efficiency for experienced drivers.
I defined more on the next section’s challenges by identifying user needs using the Exploration vs Exploitation framework.
3. Designing User Journey:
To Explore: To make onboarding delightful and comfortable for the first time Runners, I used a “progressive disclosure method.” It’s an interaction technique that delays the appearance of advanced or little-used options to reduce errors and facilitate user learning.
The main objective was not to overwhelm the user with all the available options; for this, we relegated the less frequent or more complex tasks to later steps and focused on the core user flow. In this scenario, we enabled the new users to go through our complete end-to-end user journey.
To Exploit: After the runners get familiar with the flow, they may want to set their preferences to maximize their earnings by completing more jobs in a day. Keeping this in mind, the technological and business context had to come into play where the AI provides more jobs along an optimized route. The company would offer bonuses as appreciation to hard-working drivers.
4. The Visual Parameters:
Since we were targeting less technically qualified professionals, we want the app to be clean, elegant and straightforward. I decided to use neutral colours as primary colours and use one orange to attract attention. I chose to use simple line icons and Roboto font to create a feeling of modernity and cleanness.
Also, since the app will be used in the daytime, I decided to go with a light background with bright colours for CTAs.
5. Learnings from Project:
I had a blast working on this design exercise. I knew that I just touched the entire document pick-up and drop the ecosystem's surface and needed a lot more contextual and user analysis to identify new challenges and needs. I listed some future explorations I wanted to take to make the runner’s experience more holistic and pleasant.
For a detailed case study, visit my Behance page: https://www.behance.net/gallery/83145247/Delivery-Partner-App
