Parcel delivery app 🚚
Parcel delivery app 🚚
B2B business case study | Year 2016-17
Product designers: Ikshat & Avisek
Platform: Android (Angular JS)
Delhivery is India’s largest 3rd party supply chain services company. It provides products and services with the aim of building trust and improving the lives of consumers, small businesses, enterprises, and a growing team of employees and partners.
Delhivery provides various software technologies, logistics, and warehousing services to e-commerce marketplaces, entrepreneur businesses, start-ups, and exclusive brands who want to sell their product online and get them delivered on time.
Delhivery riders use this mobile app for the Last-Mile Delivery of parcels from dispatch centers to the end customers.
Overview / Why do we need to improve 🤨
The existing app was just a basic version that was Android based for specific ZEBRA scanner Android devices, where its target was to make the delivery process completely digital. But due to some shortcomings and not-so-robust design & tech, the app could not serve to its full potential.
The challenge was to make the solution work for any regular Android phone where it works faster, linearly, and error-free, and improves efficiency for our delivery executives. It should also provide the best shipment delivery experience to the end customers as well.
Understanding the problem 🤷🏻♂️
The challenges we faced with the current solutions were:
Restricted to only use ZEBRA android scanning devices which were not flexible to newer Android OS updates.
These devices are bulky and costly, hence are not financially viable to expand & cover the vast Indian sub-continent easily.
The designs were custom-made and do not inspire android material design.
The tech stack which was used to build the app is not robust and scalable in that it cannot be installed on any Android device.
The ZEBRA device is not compatible to scan QR codes and which is the future as most companies want to adopt QR codes.
Before diving into the case studies,
I would like to share the design thinking process 🧠
used for this case study
Status Quo
The app was only built in Android OS.
It is specific for ZEBRA scanning devices.
Login can only be done by username, password, and the dispatch center code.
Inconsistent design style compared to other Delhivery products.
Only barcodes were scannable.
QR codes cannot be scanned as the device was incompatible.
Working together 🤝
We set up a squad of 2 designers, android devs, a backend dev, and a product manager, and adapted the agile methodology.
To get some design critics from time to time, we set up a weekly sync rest of the design team to involve them and get their feedback.
My role was to perform end-to-end research, define the user's problem, ideate different ideas, build prototypes, test them with users, and gather feedback to iterate again.
MVP / Primary Objective ⛳️
To spread this app to the Delhivery employees in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as well and make the operations completely paperless.
To enable every delivery rider/executive to use the Last mile delivery app on their personal Android phones so that any rider can onboard faster.
Increase the rider's productivity and make efficient deliveries.
Riders are able to prioritize their deliveries according to their needs.
Enhancing support to multiple payment options for the cashless postpaid deliveries in the app.
Quick login with the mobile number of the rider and the rider can track the progress of every dispatch.
Setting the product scope
Reviewing the non-digital ways of working
Parcels are being sorted by the riders
Ethnographic research with delivery rider
Brainstorming design ideas 💡
Once the research was over, we accumulated the information, analyze my observations and synthesize them to define the core problems and goals.
Brainstorm and Worst Possible Idea techniques were typically used at the start of the ideation stage to stimulate freedom of thought and expand the problem space.
We both designers took the diverge and converge approach where we diverged by splitting the user flows between each other and converged to do peer reviews on each other's design solutions.
We also involved the rest of the design team for regular design critics and feedback.
Ideation and reviewing the early sketches
Early sketches of the user flow
Low-fidelity sketches ✍🏼
Using the Balsamiq Mockups tool, we produced a number of inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product (or specific features found within the product) to investigate the key solutions generated in the ideation stage.
These prototypes were shared and tested within the design team, internally with other departments working closer with delivery centers and with few riders at Delhivery's dispatch centers.
Sketch designs and prototypes 💻
Using the sketch app, we designed the high-fidelity designs and set up the prototype on Invision for testing with our users.
We planned and prepare to perform mobile device testing on Android phones. We set a few tasks for the users, gave them a brief introduction, and ask them to perform those tasks.
We encourage users to think aloud, to understand what they are thinking, and to note down their thoughts and actions.
We also took leverage to use the Lookback app for users' face recording to capture their finger clicks, behavior, and emotions.
The final solution 🤩
After testing with the internals and taking their feedback, we finalized this version.
Devs created a POC and run the Android app in one of the testing delivery centers.
With this new POC, delivery riders were able to save approx 20% of the time in each delivery dispatch.
End customers turned out to be super happy to see different modes of payment options.
We saw a 60% higher satisfaction rate and increased trust of the end-customers when delivery is made.
Delivery riders are super happy to use this app, which helps them to increase their productivity, reduce negative delivery attempts, and hence higher incentives.