Design Problem Statement
Traditionally, on-demand bus services have been in existence for rural areas for some years, though implemented for convenience they can pose a bit of an inconvenience: Customers call the reservation center to book but the buses end up arriving; an average of one hour late. There is no available online/mobile booking platform to aid the process. This may be due to the fact that there is a lot of manual effort required to dispatch the ride request ie. getting a driver and a vehicle.
Understanding the Problem
In order to know the kind of product to build for the environment, we had to pay attention to the following keywords
- Decentralize
- Gridlock Cities
- Urban Mobility Solution
- Shuttle Service
- Consumers
- Consumer Locations
- Public Transportation
- Shared Economy
- Request Rides
- Accept Request.
Our Solution: Goal-Oriented Design
- The perfect driver application.
- Locate potential customers; where they want to go, where they intend to alight and conveniently transport passengers together.
- A smart solution which does not distract the driver.
The Process
Understanding the problem.
We used Lagos state, a state in Nigeria as our primary research environment. Lagos identifies as one of the cities with consistent gridlocks, bad roads and an assortment of passengers.
We made extensive use of Qualitative Research to understand the problem, gain users empathy and develop personas to guide our storyboards, user journey and wireframe.
Below are the questions we drafted to ask our research participants.
Research Questions
1. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
2. How long have you been driving?
3. How much do you make daily?
4. How do you handle harassment from touts
5. How do you manage traffic situations?
6. How do you get passengers daily?
7. What time of the day do you get passengers?
8. How do you regulate your fees?
9. How do you manage the bad road?
PERSONA
The results of the research provided me with an elaborate guide on what are the everyday challenges of the drivers. After gathering insights, I found fascinating ideas about their needs, wants, motivations, expectations and current problems, which, as a result of the users’ answers this helped me to create three personas.
Two of the personas were based on their daily challenges which are waking up early in the morning to begin to locate riders and in the cause of that they would have to pay individual dues to the association members which is frustrating. Last Persona focused on the aspect where he would have to wait for calls before proceeding to pick up riders, which can be daunting for his financial goal.
Quotes Directly from Users:
- “Capturing the exact details of price”
- “I face a lot of extortion from the head group of my association ”
Competitors Research
We paid close attention to the consumer market — Asia, Latin America and Europe. Next, we researched the different live products under each of these categories.
Solutions: carpooling, ride-sharing, smart shuttles, free-floating cars and scooter sharing.
USER FLOW
After a lot of deliberation, I decided to focus on the driver to many riders which are the on-demand service (For passengers scattered along a route ). Creating a basic flow of the app allowed me to figure out each step of the users throughout the solutions. This flow is based on some assumption that the driver and the rider do have access to the internet neglecting any internet disruption.
User Scenarios
We had a plethora of user scenarios because we worked mostly based on assumptions only adding a few real life scenarios.
- Drivers Scenario
- Passengers Scenario
- Business Scenario
Weighing our design options
We first considered our customers in areas with poor internet connections and designed solution with USSD codes
User Journey
A visual representation of the customer journey through the physical and digital environments across various touchpoints to identify any opportunities by mapping the customer’s emotions throughout.
StoryBoard
I designed storyboards with different scenarios to grasp a total understanding of our design solution.
User Scenarios
We had a plethora of user scenarios because we worked mostly based on assumptions only adding a few real life scenarios.
- Drivers Scenario
- Passengers Scenario
- Business Scenario
Weighing our design options
We first considered our customers in areas with poor internet connections and designed solution with USSD codes
User Journey
A visual representation of the customer journey through the physical and digital environments across various touchpoints to identify any opportunities by mapping the customer’s emotions throughout.
SKETCHES
This helped me to have a quick overview of how the app will look like.
Lo-Fi Wireframe & High Fidelity Wireframes
This part of the job was handled by the UX/UI Designer Sesan Osanyinbi. Unfortunately, I do not have the full permission to display that now due to NDA reasons.
