Solving ‘range-anxiety’ for EV drivers with RE-RIDE! A road-trip generator for electric cars

Case Study

The Context

This was my first project which began week 1 of the UXDI course at GA. The brief was to identify a pain-point of our assigned ‘user’ applying best practices in user research.

The project was split in 2 weeks:

Goal of week 1: Rapid Prototyping — To be able to confidently create an interactive prototype

Goal of week 2 : Visual Design—We revisited the project much later in the course applying visual design principles to our prototype. Here is the finished result:

High-Fidelity Interactive Prototype

Conducting User Interviews

“Know thy user, and you are not thy user”- Arnie Lund

The discovery stage began by interviewing Oliver. I asked for his consent to record on my phone so I could keep my focus solely on him, but if you don’t have consent to record, then you must take notes. I began by asking him a series of questions I prepared earlier regarding his interests to see if I could find a problem worth solving via UX.

Oliver is an eccentric individual with many interests spanning collecting dark artefacts to starting up businesses. He finds it hard to deal with the overwhelming responsibilities of pursuing his ideas and gets stressed quite easily. One thing he really enjoys and loves is driving his Renault Twizy in his hometown, Paris. Due to the influx of Teslas, he has had problems in finding available parking/charge points as he will get there and they are either occupied or they don’t have the right charger. He won’t risk going on long drives with his Twizy for that reason.

To conclude this stage, user interviews add value by:

1. Establishing empathy for potential users
2. Confirming value in your product
3. Helps to determine if the vision of your product is a dream or nightmare

As I will be designing purely for Oliver, I stopped at one interview. It is necessary to conduct more for a product idea you may have. Here is a great article by Nielsen-Norman group on pros and cons of User Interviews.

Gathering Qualitative Data

I used a mind-map to gather the data from my interview with Oliver which I created using MindNode. It is a great tool for quick brainstorms too.

Storyboarding Oliver’s pain-points

Another way of building empathy with your users is by storyboarding, here I drew Oliver’s journey.

Range anxiety — Concerns of an EV driver

SIDENOTE: Oliver left GA after the first few days so I couldn’t continue the iteration/testing period with him. I quickly found an array of sources online that helped clarify how going on long drives with an EV requires a lot of planning and of course a smartphone is absolutely necessary. It was enlightening to see the extent that some have gone to improve this experience.

This blog inspired me to keep going:

The Electric Roadmovie

One of the biggest barriers to electric car adoption, is “range anxiety” — the fear of being unable to recharge an EV’s battery while out and about. — Source: Washington Post

“The UX design should be very concerned with barriers to entry. Interfaces and user flows should be geared toward the desired response of the user. It’s all about engagement”- Jaime Levy on creating killer user experiences

Ideation

I really love this part of the process as there is no right or wrong answer, as the decision-making part comes through usability testing.

I began by brainstorming two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Goal is to charge my EV

Scenario 2: Go on a road-trip with my EV

As a designer it is important to go with your instincts and pick an idea you are passionate about. If you don’t love it, don’t do it.

I loved Scenario 2.

User Flows

I explored different journeys when creating my user flows. Its important to consider where your customer is coming from, think past the first conversion, and design for the ultimate conversion, which might lie a few steps behind. I used Ryan’s Shorthand for designing user flows.

The Concept: Re-ride

Rapid Prototyping

I began sketching the interfaces, and then created an interactive prototype in Marvel which is a great tool for building prototypes quickly. This stage is costless and extremely quick and effective to rapidly test your ideas.

Usability Testing

Once you get to your first usability test, you’ve now entered the Lean Startup feedback loop of build-measure-learn. To prepare yourself for this stage, you need to have an open mind to experiment and to fail.

After making my first prototype, I tested on 3 participants. It became very clear that it really wasn’t working the way I had anticipated.

I had complicated the interactions by adding features that were confusing the ultimate goal. It is really important to revisit feature priorities after testing too.

Testing always works, and even the worst test with the wrong user will show you important things you can do to improve your site- Steve Krug

I continued to iterate the prototype until I felt confident it met the user’s needs. This point wraps up week 1 of this project where I created the interactive prototype with the following wireframes.

Further Iterations

I developed the wireframes into mid fidelity where I applied accessibility and iOS guidelines to the typography, iconography and interactions.

Visual Design + Branding

Creating a brand for Re-ride

I didn’t want to stick to the conventional ‘green’ associated with sustainability, so I explored branding techniques to develop an identity and create a story. These key words summarise the identity of Re-ride:

• Environmental
• Adventurous
• Spontaneous
• Pop Colours

User test your mood board

Ask people what words come to mind when they see your mood board. I went through several iterations until the words matched what I was going for, and below is the result:

Mood Board for Re-ride

HIGH FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

High-Fidelity prototype and iconography

Key Experience

Being able to quickly view the status, cost and availability of a charging point giving the user what they need with minimum steps possible. The user navigates between EV CHARGERS and DESTINATIONS. They will see results based on what they input in the fields within the top. Tapping the fields drops down the expanded top navigation. You can see this in action within the interactive prototype below.

Interactive Prototype

I animated the high-fidelity prototype using Flinto and After Effects. It was my first attempt using the software and I am quite happy with the result though I would like to get better at smoothing out the transitions.

To conclude, these were the key ingredients of this project…

Tools I Used:

• Sketch
• InDesign
• Photoshop
• MindNode
• AfterEffects
• Flinto
• Marvel
• InVision
• Keynote
• and my favourite..Pen,paper, and post-its

People who influenced me:

The instructional team at General Assembly Francesca Sciandra, and Jon White. My fellow UXers Chidi Nwaubani, Chaymae Lougmani, and Stefano Passaretti, who inspired and taught me so much at the beginning of my journey into UX by continuously giving constructive feedback and pushing boundaries within their own work.

Books I was reading:

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design

Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want: Amazon.co.uk: Jaime Levy…

I find myself going back and forth with these books all the time, they are definitely worth reading, especially UX Strategy.

This project was an opportunity to learn, absorb and apply user-centred principles. If you would like to read about my client project which gives an in depth insight to the UX process, click here.

Also I would love to hear your thoughts so any feedback/questions are more than welcome.

Thanks for reading!