UI/UX Case Study: Pos Laju. Malaysia’s Largest Courier Fleet.
OVERVIEW
A friend of mine is always purchasing her items at an e-commerce site. For just about anything. From second-hand electronics at Carousell to the cutest dress at Zalora. It was something about the convenience of scrolling through e-commerce stores for hours and eventually purchasing something she doesn’t need (Her words. Not mine).
But what irritates her the most is not the browsing and purchasing. But the waiting. Most, if not all, of her purchases were sent using Pos Laju. The lack of information on the parcels as well as unexplained delays of the delivery is a common complaint from her. To make matters worse, Pos Laju doesn’t even have an official app for their customers to track and manage their delivery.
WHAT IS POS MALAYSIA AND POS LAJU?
Established in the early 1800s’ Pos Malaysia is the oldest and widest postal service in Malaysia (I thought they were using birds to send mail at that time. Like Game of Thrones or something). Fast forward to the 90s, Pos Malaysia opened Pos Laju after a significant increase in demand for courier service in 1988.
Now after 30 years, Pos Laju has become a titan in the courier industry spreading from their services to entire Peninsular Malaysia, East Malaysia, as well as numerous international destinations.
THE PROBLEM
Pos Laju promotes itself as the widest network coverage and the largest courier fleet in Malaysia (Don’t take my word for it. Its written in their site). Even being the most used courier service in Malaysia, Pos Laju still does not have an official app for its customers to track and manage their parcels. When it comes to smartphones, Pos Laju customers can only track their parcels via 3rd party apps and Pos Malaysia app.
Defining The Pain Points
Pain points are unnecessary hurdles you have to face in order to accomplish your goal. It’s the feeling when you drop your keys just before you enter your house after a stressful day. Anything that gets in the way of you and your goals is considered pain points.
When it comes to the Pos Malaysia app, there are a few pain points that can be pointed out
1. Overuse of Icons
Putting too many icons at the home page is confusing. Even more so when those icons do not have any description indicating what does the button represent. It becomes a guessing game on which button does what with only icons used as clues.
Some of the icons used are unfamiliar to the kinds we see every day. This can be frustrating for first-time users.
2. Unnecessary feature
Some apps are more complex than others. Because some problems require a much more complicated solution, it is easy to fall into the trap of adding too much feature inside an app. In the case of Pos Laju the unnecessary feature are:
- Navbar, landing page and sidebar have the same features
Putting a sidebar with the same function with landing page AND the navbar was a conundrum for me to fathom.
THE IDEA
To create an “official” app for Pos Laju is an intriguing notion. The idea here is to create a Pos Laju app that will help their customers to track their and manage their parcels using their phone. To put my design skills to use while helping others to ease their daily problem is an exciting opportunity for me.
THE RESEARCH
The purpose of the researches I did was to uncover any issues or little gems that I can find useful for this Pos Laju app. Revealing valuable information is essential in creating a product that is usable.
Competitor Research
I downloaded some of the competitors’ apps to get a feel of what they are offering when it comes to their services. I took into consideration their User Flow, UI, UX and took notes of what I felt throughout the journey.
From the competitor's research, I was able to understand what they are offering their users and try to improvise into the Pos Laju app design.
User Review
Since Pos Laju doesn’t have an official app, I wanted to know what were the reviews for the current Pos Malaysia app. Reading through the comments section from the Google Playstore, I could categorise the issues into 3 sections:
1. Bug Issues
2. Feature suggestions
3. Interface Complaints
EXECUTION: SKETCH
I wanted to see if my ideas in my head would make sense on paper. So after asking my 5-year-old niece to draw for me (please don’t believe that. I drew it myself. I’m terrible at drawing), I did some quick sketching on a piece of paper. This allows me to evaluate if my design idea is suitable for Pos Laju. Here I differentiated some of the different pages I had in mind for the app.
EXECUTION: WIREFRAME
Looking through my Picasso like sketch, I wanted to see if the app idea would resonate with the users. So I created a simple wireframe so others (and myself) could get a better understanding of what the app is about and could it achieve its goals.
EXECUTION: DESIGN
The Pos Laju app was designed using Figma. Prototyping the app using Figma is the best way to showcase the design to users.
I wanted to make the design clean and visible. This would make it easier for users of all ages to utilise the app. To achieve this, I had to choose the right colours and design a user-friendly interface.
Colour Choice
Colours influence our emotion, decision making or even our behaviour. The impact of a design depends largely on the colour choice. Complimentary or contrasting colours shapes how the users approach the app.
For this design, with a largely white background, I used Pos Laju’s orange colour throughout the app. This gives the users a familiarity from a branding standpoint.
Navbar
Inspired by social media platforms’ design (Twitter and Instagram), and also the original Pos Malaysia app design, putting the navbar at the bottom of the screen was a logical decision. This eliminates the user to perform finger gymnastics when they are using their phone with one hand.
With navbar at the bottom of the screen, the users can change to different pages of the app with ease.
Landing Screen
Prioritising parcel tracking was always the main idea for the app. Putting parcel tracking at the homepage was also a logical design move. In addition, after reading the user reviews, I added a feature for users to name their parcel. This would make it easier for them to differentiate different parcels.
Parcel Tracking
Humans are visual creatures. Being able to see or imagine is not just a gift, it’s part of who we are. That is why putting a visual representation of where the user’s parcel is located would put them at ease. This feature will keep the user in the loop the whole time. Texts below the map would specify where and what is happening with their parcel.
Creating An Account
There are additional benefits in creating an account for this app. Rather than lumping everything into one page, now they can segregate their incoming or outgoing parcels. Specific detail of their parcels will be shown so users will be aware of their parcel’s whereabouts.
Users also can choose which parcel they would like to be notified. A push notification will be sent to notify the progress of their parcel they feel it is much more important.
What is the benefit of creating an account? In addition to tracking all your parcels in one place, you will also be able to reschedule your parcel if it was not received as scheduled.
Reschedule Package Page
Although the ability the track your parcel is important, unfortunately, there are unavoidable circumstances. From bad weather to missing authorised person to pick up the package, things can happen for your parcel to reach you.
Hence, this page allows the user to reschedule a package if unfortunate circumstances were to occur.
TAKEAWAY
This personal project was challenging and fun to execute. It made me appreciate the design and thought process for designers as well as developers in creating an app. Creating something (albeit just a prototype) that would be beneficial for everyone’s daily use is a satisfaction that is worthwhile.