Designing to improve job safety for riders

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It’s Friday. It’s cold, it’s raining and you don’t feel like cooking. You take out your cell phone, open your delivery app and voilà. After a while you have the delivery person at your door with dinner, but… what happens to that person who brought you food when they leave? What are their working conditions? Is their job safe? Are their needs, concerns and rights covered?

Briefing

We were faced with the following challenge: how to improve the security conditions of the riders? We formed the team and faced the problem through design thinking. Ahead with the double diamond. 🔶 🔶

The team.

Research

As a starting point, we proposed a series of research questions, which we subsequently classified into four areas to investigate: user, company, material and technology. Furthermore, once the cluster was done by area, we also did it based on what type of technique we considered best for each issue. In this way we began to organize and divide the work with the intention of optimizing time to facilitate the research process.

Research questions clustered by theme and technique to apply.

Once we have reached an agreement, we specified the techniques to be carried out:

• 🔍 Desk research: documentaries, social media accounts where riders talk about their daily journeys, media interviews and extensive media coverage, especially after the recent approval of the famous “Rider Law”.
• 🔍 Netnography: we accessed a famous social network in which there are support forums within the rider community, where we were able to contact and learn first-hand about their concerns about the current situation of the sector.

Netnography.

• 🔍 Safari: we carried out safaris in the area of Cuatro Caminos in Madrid, as well as on the Gran Vía in Barcelona, ​​where a large number of riders gather. It was very interesting to observe the day-to-day conditions of the workers on site.

Safari.

• 🔍 Surveys: based on the classification of research questions with the aim of extracting quantitative information that could later clarify some of the pain points to the extent possible.
• 🔍 Interviews with experts: we of course had the first-hand vision of several riders, a former employee of the headquarters of one of the best-known home delivery companies and the perspective of a national police officer who frequently deals with riders through road safety controls.

As we delved deeper into the problem, a clear discovery was the lack of confidence that the riders (also called couriers) felt towards expressing what their working conditions are. They do not feel comfortable talking about the problems they encounter in their daily lives due to the harsh policies of most home delivery companies, whose contractual conditions are, on many occasions, opaque and abusive.

In addition to this, it happens that a large part of the rider sector is made up of immigrants. The precariousness of the job, which in itself implies great sacrifices and whose effort-reward ratio is unbalanced, added to the conditions imposed by companies, where riders are often self-employed and poorly covered, constitute a breeding ground for it to be a job in demand by people with few alternatives. In many cases in an irregular situation in the country and therefore also at work.

Insights

The research revealed to us that there are numerous sources of problems for riders to carry out their work. These are the most significant findings:

• Inclement weather is a great difficulty to deal with frequently.
• The high number of riders in certain “hot spots” in the city encourages competition that is detrimental to delivery workers and causes them to have to make longer trips.
• Delivery companies seem to prioritize speed of delivery over the safety of delivery people.
• The system that home delivery companies have to avoid the problem of rented accounts is ineffective.

The phenomenon of rented accounts

This is a concept to keep in mind. Since there are a large number of workers in an irregular situation, there are workers in a regular situation who take advantage of this. Regularized workers are registered in the company’s delivery application, but they “rent” said account to irregular delivery workers so that they can carry out shifts using their profile. This causes a disadvantageous situation for the latter, since an abusive and unfair percentage of profits is agreed upon. On the other hand, most companies put little focus on the issue since the phenomenon has no impact on their profits.

User Persona and User Journey

As User Persona we have Alex, a delivery driver from Venezuela who has legal immigrant status, whose intention is to save to be able to validate his university degree in the future and dedicate himself to his profession to be able to progress in life.

User persona.

Meanwhile, however, he recognizes that a large part of his difficulties as a rider lie in the circumstances of moving outdoors daily in a big city, including the few facilities provided by the company in this regard.

The same happens with the User Journey, where the most significant “pain points” have the same origin. Inclement weather, dangers derived from road safety, etc.

User Journey.

Ideation

The team met again, and we analyzed all the information extracted from the research.

The origin of our idea arose from a comment made by one of our interviewed experts. The subject in question is a police officer who sometimes has contact with riders through road safety checks. He commented that as with truckers or VTC drivers, riders should have a rest base to go to between their services by law. This already made the idea come to mind.

Apart from this, from the insights extracted from the interviews with riders, we also detected certain patterns. The constant physical wear and tear, traveling long distances, inclement weather, lack of tools to fix the bike or lack of shelter. In short, certain shortcomings or pain points in their work routine related to the time they spend on the street while waiting for orders or during their long commutes and work days.

All of this led us to realize that the idea of ​​something similar to a rest area could provide a solution to these pain points detected, especially taking into account that riders spend many hours waiting for orders to arrive or waiting for restaurants to give them delivery.

Therefore our idea was: RIDER AREA, a physical space where riders would be sheltered from inclement weather and could also rest to regain strength.

Inspired by similar services from other sectors such as transporters/truckers on the roads, the idea was to offer solutions adapted to the rider sector, trying to cover the greatest number of needs without leaving aside economic viability.

Carrier rest areas.

Value proposition and business model

The main added value that the idea provides is that access to the Rider Zone is provided through a fingerprint verification system. This is intended to ensure that only those users who have a legal license can access, since the app control verifications would also have to be carried out using a fingerprint, and obviously this has to match the access fingerprint to the Rider Zone. This solves several problems: the use of legal licenses exclusively is encouraged, reducing the saturation of riders, which in turn allows them to have greater profits. And on the other hand, it solves the company’s problems of having irregular workers hired.

Fingerprint access/verification system.

As a business model and to meet the costs of investment in the Rider Zone, we propose a series of measures to generate income, such as:

• Agreements with companies that want to advertise using the backpacks where the riders carry their deliveries.
• Food and beverage vending machines within the Zone.
• Through agreements with parcel companies to deliver packages, in addition to the existing food deliveries, a broader segment is covered, generating more income.

Business model.

Rest & Ride Zone

The proposal is an initiative in which food delivery companies invest as an action to improve the safety and stability of their workers. This rest area would be available to riders during their work day, providing them with shelter from inclement weather.

The identification system will help ensure that workers and users use the application correctly and prevent fraud related to rented accounts. In addition, random checks will be carried out several times a day during the work day to prevent identity fraud, control the number of active riders in each area and know how many riders are enjoying these spaces.

The main functionalities of the Zone will be:

• Wide parking area for work vehicles.
• Workshop equipped with tools and equipment necessary for repairs or adjustments on bicycles and scooters.
• Room equipped with kitchen and tables so that riders have a place to eat during their rest time.
• Meeting room and office for a zone leader. This leader will be available to support couriers in case they need to resolve questions or problems and facilitate more effective and faster communication with the company’s technical support.
• Periodic courses on road safety.

The Rider Zone schedule will be adjusted according to the demand for orders on different days of the week, ensuring that it is available when riders need it most to rest and recover energy during their day.

Conclusiones

As designers we must be aware that the solution is not always in technology. The “out of the box” mentality should help us explore all possibilities without leaving aside viability and business model. This project allowed us to address solutions respecting these concepts and contributing ideas that did not enter our imagination at first hand.

One of the advantages of the design thinking methodology is being able to delve deeper into sectors about which there is prior great ignorance. Being able to use the research process to improve the working conditions of a sector as precarious as that of food delivery workers has been enriching not only at the design level, but also solidarity wise.

Thanks for your time!