Design for Everyday Deliveries
UX design is often misunderstood and commonly underutilized. Good UX is at the heart of HAMMALY’s service, and I break down some of the elements in this story.
Digging deeper into the world of HAMMALY, I’m sharing a systematic approach to how we tackle the process of designing a good product. Our product at HAMMALY boils down to this — Same Day Delivery Service with Cash on Delivery (SDDSw/COD).
The starting point is acknowledging that being in the business of delivering packages goes way beyond a transaction where the customer receives his or her package at home or in the office. It is an intertwining interaction involving various groups of people and different moments put together to form a great customer experience. This overall experience is the User Experience (UX).
Peeling the banana
For those who know me, drawing analogous references and using metaphors is the oxygen to how I try to breathe life into my communication, so please don’t mind me as I introduce a drawing of a banana to illustrate the profound depth of the framework that I’m diving into from here on.
In my last article, I touched on branding, expressing what we are — that’s the banana skin. Peeling that away, thats where you find where UX is, and this captures how we work.
First of, UX isn’t about stand alone digital experiences, its about thinking of the customer experience across the physical and digital world. It does not end when a customer awards or rates 5 stars for a service, nor it is just an App that lives in your phone.
Understanding people
According to Don Norman, the human centred design process starts with a good understanding of people and the needs that the design is intended to meet. And if 5 star ratings were something to measure the success of HAMMALY’s UX by, then the 5 stars comes from 3 groups: Driver, Merchant, and Customer.
To that point on users, this is how we map and stitch the UX at HAMMALY.
HAMMALY User Experience (HUX) Map
Structuring an approach towards how we design for deliveries.
Quite literally, HAMMALY UX is an overlay of focusing on two aspects—
the USER and the EXPERIENCE (design points).
While the first interaction primarily kicks-off between the merchant and the customer when the order is made, we approach this from the lens of the driver — the urban Hammalis.
This nuance of who these drivers are, greatly frames the way we approach the business. Hence that is why a copy and paste model of any foreign courier delivery model will not suffice.
That said, there are things outside the Middle East that we can adopt. For example, embodying IDEO’s Design Thinking process is invaluable, and that has helped carry us a long way to where we are today.
To summarize, what we have today is a framework to apply. It has helped and guided us through the process of designing for deliveries. In subsequent writings, I will zoom in further to share how we tackle the 3 design interaction points: Order>Pick-up>Delivery.
I hope this article proves itself to be useful not just to HAMMALY, but to anyone interested in UX, HCD, startups and the GCC.
Be a part of this community
We are currently operational, offering our same-day delivery service to a number of stores at City Center, Doha. So the next time you’re at a mall and need someone to take your shopping home for you, think HAMMALY!
Reach out to us: On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, our Website or Email and let us know what are the products you’d like to be delivered to your home.
Stay tuned: Next week, you’ll hear from another one of our team members about the importance of communication and outreach.
If you liked our story and want to see us grow, be sure to click that green heart at the bottom so this post can recommend to your friends. If you do that, we’ll go bananas!
