How my design work helped MoveinSync become India's largest employee transport service provider in short span of time.
My Role
Redesigning the entire product and its components, The ETS (Employee Transportation System), Employee mobile app, and Driver side mobile app
Timeline: 2015-First Half (5~6 months)
Project Summary
MoveinSync is a product built around employee transportation needs and it solves the biggest challenges of this not-so-organized sector with technology, bringing in more
Employee Security
Cost and Time Efficiency
Transparency via Automation
The company is founded by engineers and all its products were built that way (efficient but not so high on usability) without any designer's inputs so the products had complex interfaces, confusing technical nomenclature, inconsistent UI elements, and navigation, it was quite tough and unintuitive to understand the workflows and the overall UX of all their products lacked cohesiveness.
My biggest task was to simplify and structurize the workflows for a minimal learning curve and let the MNC employees (end-user) have a delightful commute experience with our app. The second big priority was to redesign the ETS, organize its information architecture and navigation in such a way that even a newly joined intern can use it without much guidance or training from seniors.
Challenges
To improve the overall user experience of both internal and external products.
but to make this happen there were other several fundamental challenges like
Lack of unified documentation regarding the overall architecture of the product.
lack of developers to build something from scratch.
Too many bugs in the system kept the team away from any RnD work in free time.
No UI developer for web or mobile apps so we had more constraints using Cordova.
No product documentation for reference so I had to spend a lot of time with engineers and understand it.
Solution - Phase 1- Research (Primary and Secondary)
I started with meeting drivers, transportation managers, and employees of various MNCs to capture their pain points with the application.
I also checked the Play Store reviews and made a note of all the technical and UX issues with similar patterns and the following top problems came up:
Employee app issues:
Cab not visible on the map (tracking feature not working sometimes)
Communication with drivers is not easy (language issues).
Cab finding is not easy (3 white cabs on the same pickup point, which one is mine?)
Canceling the cab doesn't give any success notification.
Changing my address is not updating in real-time.
Rescheduling the cab for a new time is not easy.
there is no chat support for employees.
How to find whom I am traveling with? (coworker info builds socializing comfort)
How to give feedback and track it like a ticketing system?
SOS feature utility not clearly communicated.
Driver app issues:
The phone is too small, map visibility is a challenge. (we had given drivers a cheap android phone that time with custom locks and tracking features)
Trip sheet not loading on time.
Employee cab cancellation is not communicated in advance to change the route.
The trip sheet is not visible at times due to network loss.
accidental pressing on UI will cancel the entire trip (sometimes).
Capturing a manual trip sheet for later use as digital entry is not possible.
Cab breakdown or delay due to jam is not communicated in real-time.
Employee calling several times for updates.
Language-related communication issues amongst drivers and employees.
No real-time tech support for drivers.
ETS (Employee Transport System) level issues:
Navigation is not clear and without breadcrumbs its difficult to understand where i am in the system.
Bulk operations and its UI are not intuitive.
No tutorials or help sections to make people find a page or learn about some feature.
Only 3 developers in the whole company knew in detail how the whole system really works.
We had inconsistent behavior of UI elements in the system like using radio buttons instead of dropdowns. Using different pages for adding and editing driver details.
No fixed page layout and placement of UI elements like search or date picker or buttons.
There was no structure to the user/MNC/employee/diver onboarding process.
There are no notifications and reminder settings in the app. ( i can't schedule any process at mid-night)
Solution - Phase 2- meeting the core team
Part 2 (Finding answers from the core team via meeting for face to face discussions)
Started with a closed card sorting session.
I invited everyone from the product team and conducted a card sorting session for all of us to brainstorm on the Information Architecture of ETS.
After a good week-long discussion with the PMs and Engineering, we decided to keep an agile approach and started with improving the most impactful components of our top and bottom line which is the Billing Module and Manage Cabs module.
Solution - Phase 3
Redesigning the Employee App, ETS, and Driver's Mobile App.
Redesigned Employee App (the entire android app task flow and screens for each task)
Redesigned Driver App (the entire task flow and screens for each task)
Results
MoveinSync got one of its biggest clients after the redesign implementation
Before and After Comparison:
End-User Feedback
Business Growth
Project Learnings
When you fix the basic usability of a product its business performance also improves and it reflects in profit growth as well.
Convincing the C-Suite is easier with numbers, like 5-star ratings from end-users.
Good Design helps everyone in the system right from the entry-level drivers liking the new simplified app to the customer support engineerings getting lesser tickets and the salespeople finding it easier to pitch the product to bigger customers because of good overall UX and satisfaction rating. Every stakeholder's work-life become better by good design.
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