Quality of life
Businesses that have company vehicles have a need for a fleet management system that allows them to track various behavior of their vehicle such as location, fuel consumption, mileage, etc. I was contacted by a company that offers Fleet Management SaaS to their customers. Up to that point, their focus was on a desktop application, which their clients used in an office setting. As for the mobile, they were reselling a third-party solution which they somewhat modified for the needs of their customers.
They wanted to develop a mobile application suited specifically to their business model and services they are offering and improve the quality of their clients by allowing them to track their vehicles from the mobile phone without experiencing issues that the previously used third-party solution had.
I realized that my initial challenge would be to understand the issues users are having with the current solution and what needs are not being met. On the other hand, I knew that I needed to differentiate the behavior and habits of the users that were a result of using an unfit solution and how to fix them without detraction.
User research, interviews, and usability testing.
I set out to meet the end users of the application ranging from dispatchers, office managers, and foremen to small business owners and executives.
“It really bothers me that every time I open the application, I have to type in the username and password, which are long and complicated” - Slavica, Dispatcher in a trucking company.
The application didn’t have a registration process, the company was issuing the credentials to the system directly to their clients, and they were very safe if you know what I mean. I had to find a solution for this without disrupting the business flow.
“Sometimes I give up. In order to see a vehicle that I want to track on a map I need to go to a completely different page, select that vehicle then go back to the Map. But then if I want to see additional information I need to go all the way back to that vehicle page. It’s even a bigger mess when I want to track multiple vehicles” - Misko, Owner of a delivery
This is a mess even to explain but in short, the application they were using had a main menu from where they had the option to see the map but in order to filter which vehicles they wanted to see they had to go to the vehicle list page. This was a problem because the third-party solution they were using wasn’t initially made for fleet management. It was a major pain point.
I conducted several interviews and tests with users and had a huge list of issues and suggestions. Additionally, I managed to recognize multiple behaviors that were the result of using an unfit solution up to that point. In order to quickly and powerfully surface common themes and recognize issues that needed to be addressed, I used the method of affinity mapping.
Final design
Most of the participants didn’t even address the look and feel of the application that had an interface that gave a feeling like it was compiled from a set of components from a coding library.
But before I jumped into adding color and typography to the app I wanted to make sure that the needs of my new friends were being met with the new design and resolve as many of their issues.
I changed the user flow just enough so that it improves the quality of life of users but is easy enough so that they have no problems getting used to it. Map was a central part of the application and was seen as soon as they open the app and they were able to filter which vehicles they want to see on the map. From there they would be able to access each vehicle separately and see additional information about them.
Got rid of features that weren’t concerning the user's needs, and solved multiple issues by clearly defining the requirements to the developers. Small adjustments such as making the width of the vehicle path be dynamic based on the zoom level solved a lot of issues. Adding a “Remember me” checkbox to the login page solved Slavica’s pain point.
I went back to my friends from the user base with a prototype made from wireframes and did another round of usability testing. Did the affinity mapping procedure again and made small adjustments.
I noticed that the company that employed me didn’t have much of a brand identity besides having a simple logo. Before defining a design system I saw to it that we created an initial brand guideline book. After that, all that was left was to apply the design system to the wireframes and create clear components to ease the development process.