Logistics App

Creating a new way for payments to be register within the app without adding too much complexity to the process

My contributions: flow study, flow optimization, workshop preparation, workshop facilitation, ideation session, journey as is, 4 Ws, prioritization
Role: Single UX Researcher assigned to the product & engineering team
Duration: 4 weeks (Sep. 2021 | 2 sprints)

THE PROJECT

I started to work in the Product team of one of the largest business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platforms in the world. I provide UX/UI research for one segment of the company that concerns the app drivers use to execute their daily job, in order to provide a global logistics solution working in an Agile Squad format. It is a project with 2-week sprints, in a process of continual discovery, testing, and feedback.

Even though I work with a team of over 10 people, I am the only UX researcher in the team, and time constraints are a bit defy to overcome on a daily basis.

This project was developed at Sensorama Design. To comply with my non-disclosure agreement with Sensorama Design and this client, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study.

CONTEXT

The client was expanding its operations to other countries in Latin America and after several fit/gap meetings we mapped the necessary features the app needed so the rollout could happen.

THE CHALLENGE

ADAPT THE NEEDS FROM OTHER ZONES IN LATIN AMERICA TO THE
EXISTING DRIVERS APP

Our methodology in this project has gone through several iterations, although following the double diamond methodology we are required to be adaptive to the agile methodology and push for better design practices.

The main goals for this feature were:

to develop a solution within the 2 sprints we were given
add it to the current app without adding complexity to the process.

UNDERSTANDING THE ZONES AS A WHOLE

The first thing needed was understand the current user journey for the drivers in the soon-to-be rollout zone. Each zone has their own set of rules, operation differs, and the app used in the process works differently from our client’s app. Since the goal is to be a global app, everything needs to be thought so the app can fit several scenarios without the needed to be remodeled every time a rollout occurs.

I set a time with the team in Peru because the pilot would be there and they have a number of different scenarios mapped. The objective was map a journey as is of the current process they have. I used screen shots of their current app as a guide and the journey contained:

The step of the journey
Who was responsible in the step
What stage of the delivery that happened
What were the pain points and opportunities seen in each step

Journey as is of the entire logistics process in Peru

UNDERSTANDING THE REQUIRED FEATURE

After having an overview of the process, we had another session with the team in Peru where we focused on discovering how the current payment collection process in depth, in order to align it with our product.

In this stage we had a deep dive to understand what was the importance of payment collection for them, who uses it (to map the users), attention points and what opportunities and pain points the team in Peru saw on this particular feature.

Deep dive on payment method and collection

DEFINE

After having a good understanding of the process, I had the first session with the product team which included PMs, Product Designers and Stakeholders to define what the problem was.

I used the 4 Ws methodology for us to explore the problems we were trying to solve with this particular feature. The 4 Ws consists in building a sentence with Who, What, Where and Why, such as the example below

4 Ws Example

The team was able to come up with 4 problem statements which gave as a well framed problem:

During this process, the team was having some additional questions that didn’t come up when we were mapping the process with the team in Peru. Since they were good and valid questions, we started to write them down.

Open questions raised by the team

ITERATIVE PROCESS

As the double diamond and the whole process in UX is an iterative process, we didn’t go any further in our first session because we needed answer for the open questions as they were important. Also, understanding better these parts of the process would mean a better ideation session when we got to it, because we would think about solutions considering all the attention points and constraints.

We were fast to schedule another quick meeting and have all the open questions answered in detail.

Open questions answered

MOVING ON TO THE IDEATION SESSION

With all the pieces of information in hands and with the framed problem already done, I set up a ideation session for the team to start to think how this solution should be.

We started with a benchmarking, and since we were talking about payment collection and methods I thought it really made sense to bring as much references as possible that were similar/related/close to the problems we were trying to solve.

Benchmarking on Miro

After that, I gave a few minutes for the group to look at the benchmarking panel and we moved on to the next part of the ideation. I used a technique called Round-Robin, however since I modified it a little bit I call it Round-Robin Twist.

So this Round-Robin Twist consists in:

separating people into groups and giving a time for them to think about a solution.
After this time, they are given a few minutes to explain the idea to their colleagues. In this moment no interruptions are allowed. Once the team is done explaining the idea, questions are permitted only if someone didn’t understand the idea but no comments or suggestions should be made at this time.
Once all the groups explained their idea each team is given an specific time to look at the ideas of their colleagues and compliment or constructively give their opinion on how to improve (for example using the “what if…” method)
Finally, when all the groups are done the activity is over and we have ideas and comments on this ideas that can be explored later

Round robin twist on Miro

PRIORITIZATION

We reunited for a third session to get the results from the Round-Robin Twist and started to sort the information so the product designers could have a direction. I was conducting the session once again by going over every screen and comments so we could all debate a bit on them.
After that, the activity I proposed was for us to do an extraction of main priorities for the first wireframe.

In order for us to do that we:

identified what were the “must haves”: we did that by looking back at our framed problem sentences and looking at the ideas the teams brought in the ideation session
identified what were the interactions, screens, buttons or any sort of component that were repetitive throughout all the three ideas: we saw if there was repetition, and then analyzed if there were comments next to them and things we should be aware

Priorities for the Product Designers to start the wireframes

We left this last session with the must haves of the first wireframe that must be presented for this feature. Additionally, product designers can rely on wireframes made in the ideation session and get visual insights from benchmarking.

RESULTS

Within 2 sprints we were able to have a good overview of the process in another zone and get to an idea to start the process of designing the screens for this new feature. This was also very important for the team as we used this example to show the team that we could be able to run processes with quality and UX involved in one month.

TAKEAWAY

I’ve been with this team for a while now, and I learned that:

I need to mix them into diverse groups so we can have more ideas and more participation
I need to separate HYPPOS and people with very strong opinions otherwise we will end up the session with only one idea
I need to always think about ways to get them out of the box, because most times the PMs will come into the session with an idea set in mind

It was very important for the team to go through this process to:

work better as a team
further understand not only the importance of UX methods, but also that we can add these methodologies when developing something new within the allotted time

Also, I love new methodologies and mixing up an existing one to support this workshop was very interesting to see the several possibilities we have in this field.