Introduction — Healthcare in its current state

The United States Healthcare as an industry is up for a lot of changes considering the rapidly-evolving government regulations, the introduction of technological innovations, and the growing patient expectations. In an ideal set-up of Employer-Employee interaction in the working professionals; providing healthcare is not just about treating patients anymore. The integration between the need of a desire and the habits of the individual with the medical treatment is the need seemed.

The premise(or demographic) we want here to be established here is of an Employee counting on the employer for the healthcare insurance and taking the use of the same for his/her medical needs.

Problem Statement & Validation (Why)

While the following data makes us realize the dependency of an employer-regulated Healthcare industry, where the employee is dependent on the set-defined health coverage :

• 155Mn+ Americans count on an employer for health coverage
• $1.2Tn Size of the employer health insurance industry in the US
• 81% of employees at large firms were enrolled in plans that were partially or self-funded in 2018, up from 79% in 2017
• 3 out of 4, or about 108 million of us, receive health coverage through a self-insured employer plan
• As of 2017, 79% of U.S. employers with 200 employees or more self-insured their health benefits; 91% of covered workers at firms with 5,000 or more employees are on self-funded plans

As we initially said that providing healthcare is not just by taking care of medical treatment which falls at the end but to start with getting more interested in an Individual’s daily behavior in terms of there habits and ongoing medical precautionary measures. For most of the United State population, remembering to take a daily medication is found to be critical in determining the higher chances affecting their healthy life and even though largely ignored. According to studies, we see

1. 50% of patients fail to take medications as prescribed. Lack of this medicine adherence is estimated to cause approximately 125,000 deaths a year.

2. 20–30% of patients never completed their medication.

3. This in turn leads to at least 23% of hospitalisations every year and which cost the American healthcare system between $100 billion and $289 billion a year.

While if we combine the Employee and Employers key pain points as :

• Rising healthcare costs: but ROI in terms of employee care or productivity hasn’t improved.
• Lack of actionable data: healthcare investment has been a black box, offering too little data, too late. Having different vendors for various pieces of your healthcare strategy further compounds this problem.
• No singular digital mechanism: for employees to interact with a super complicated healthcare system.
• Low employee engagement: leading to sub-optimal outcomes for investment.

Competitor Analysis

Before we propose to the user personas, we need to enable and verify the user needs and motivations since for a noted period they are been exposed to the known competitors providing healthcare to the best of their knowledge.

We jot down our Competitor Analysis. considering Collective Health, Castlight Health, and Right away Healthcare since they have a major share in the US Healthcare Employer-based market. The common features which have been seen across :

• Right Resource Direction: All of the competitors provided a resource for reference
• Health Recommendation: All the competitor provide recommendation basis the condition a user feel like but fail to provide symptom-based health services.

Competitors while covering most of the general requirement still lacks some of the

• While we see that incorporating a new habit or behavior based on the insights provided or due to self-awareness is not incorporated by any of the competitors which were one of the problem statements during our market research.
• They fail to acknowledge a symptom-based recommendation of health service providers.
• They don’t analyze the habits of an individual which mostly comes out as an early stage for prolonged health conditions.

Overview (How)

With the help of the problem statement validation through a literature review, we target to answer the need for such an application that can come handy to the end-user(Employee) into maintaining a healthy life and reaching out to their health needs.

Considering the above problem statements and the fact check of the same leads us to the stage where we ask ourselves “How we can” to focus on some of the specific user goals to the problem.

1. Avoid Carelessness of Employee towards self-health habits and increase awareness :

a)One should never miss medications and hospital appointments due to bad memory and related factors.

b) One can easily access his/her medication and appointment histories.

c) Tips and content related to improving one’s health condition are needed.

2. Easy Management of the health condition of Employee;in-case of an Emergency or Medical Need

a) Enabling the user’s knowledge of available partner hospitals/clinics nearby which would be providing a preferential treatment(motivational anchor).

b) Reducing the response time and quickly attending to the user’s needs.

c) Seamlessly making it easy for the user to input the insurance data and access related partner clinics/hospitals.

User Personas

Mind Mapping & Information Architecture

User Scenarios

1. One day, while in his client meeting Jacob felt a pain in his chest and could not speak for a minute; while he took a break for a minute he contacted her assistant for a quick booking for his medical condition to the nearest available clinic/hospital after his meeting. He still is not feeling great in the meeting but concludes the same in hurry; while he flees to the hospital address provided by her secretary at the reception he still sees a lot of details being asked as his insurance details too. He is frustrated with the delay in attending him and pays the whole amount in cash because of the hurry.
2. In her regular dental checkup sessions, Julie is waiting for her turn at her trusted clinics which is part of the insurance provider list. She knows it was very hard to find and is very proud of her research which has provided her with a fruitful outcome. Upon payment of the fees, she checks that the amount she paid is more than the minimum fees in the health insurance. While the cashier still insists on the amount and says there are some additional noted points she must have missed as the cashier’s system is correctly displaying the remaining amount. She is frustrated at this and wants to talk to the insurance provider right away but has to wait till she gets the same detail from her HR eventually.

Proposed Solution

Over the user scenarios, we notice the need for motivation along with the management of an individual’s health condition.

The main focus of this application is to motivate our users to live a healthy life.

• They should be able to find care with ease call 24x7 concierge, book appointments, find a caregiver.
• They should be able to join a program to manage their health conditions. For instance, if they choose to be a part of the weight management program (lose/maintain/gain weight), we should allow them to — Count their steps, measure calorie intake, meet daily exercise goals, manage gym memberships/fitness classes.
• They should be pushed to developing healthy habits, or nudge to stop, such as drink water, mindfulness, quit smoking.

On top of it, some users can also use the app to manage a (chronic) condition,

• by adding reminders for medications,
• adding reminders for appointments,
• reading education content, occasionally taking assessments to re-assess the risk.
• Some of the other conditions of users can be pregnancy or being young parents who have to deal with immunisations and finding perfect daycare options.

Resources

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6045499/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/well/the-cost-of-not-taking-your-medicine.html

UX Design Case Study

As we all know the world-we-know is going a tremble and so would be the mobility post-COVID will see a tremendous transition. So far known facts of Increasing traffic density and environmental pollution which represent a serious challenge for cities would be the sort to irradiated as the traditional combustion engines would be gradually replaced by new electric-driven concepts. Vehicle ownership would become less important and shared mobility services will be on the rise.

Let's ponder on some initiatives to tackle the problem with innovative mobility services,

• focusing on shared
• electrified mobility with miniature vehicles such as e-scooters and e-bicycles.

Micromobility as we refer; would shape the future of urban transportation where-in successfully applied in parts by Shuttl, Yulu Bikes, Uber, and Ola Electric, etc.

Overlining Strategy

We all agree that the easier a mobile application is to learn to use and the easier it is for the users to find the functionality to learn it — the more useful that application is likely to be to the user. On an overlining arch, we are going to build and discover more into Discoverability and Learnability as our overlining design strategy here.

Discoverability and learnability are both complementary to each other.

Discoverability refers to the ease with which users can discover features within an application. Learnability refers to how easy it is for the user to learn to use the application and its features. Whilst not identical concepts they are closely related enough that you can treat them together in your designs.

The need for users to be able to discover functionality becomes critical on a mobile interface where limited screen real estate requires different approaches compared to the desktop. Learnability would reflect the user’s needs and investment in the application — the more it is used and the more it costs — the more likely the user is to tolerate a steeper learning curve.

Approach

We would take onto a solution over a Mobile application to introduce Micromobility we would be taking on a certain boundary level hypothesis to start of our design process as

• Inclusion of shared Mobility in this case taxi services
• Inclusion of E-Scooters and E-Bicycles apart from regular taxi services

Now, Let's devise a strategy of distributing into steps we would be the following:

1. Identify the user; personification of demographic and segment
2. Define our Success Metrics
3. Express our design solutions
4. Analyze our solutions

In addition to this, we are going to set certain hypothetical(but proven in research) boundaries on which our solution will be based on :

94% of mobile users use portrait mode, meaning less width to work with.

Typically, mobile users find themselves in three scenarios:

1. Micro tasking — they use devices in short, intense spurts — e.g., to buy tickets.
2. Local — they use devices to see what’s happening around them.
3. Bored — e.g., they surf newsfeed links while waiting.

with focusing on the Reachability of the User’s Finger on the Screen.

1. Identify the user

Lets set the context of our user base which impacts their behavior to cover all set a picturesque of complex demographic they may or may not be present in.

2. Define our Success Metrics

One should define the parameters he/she is going to judge the success of the solution proposed and the following are our high-level successful criteria/metrics :

• Increase “Findability” of Vehicles(increasing Micro Tasking)
• Ease in connectivity to probable trips & vehicles nearby(make it local to the user)
• Intuitive Access to different categories and options while choosing vehicles
• Providing various modes of Payment Options
• Imbedded and simple Customer Resolution and Support (Engage user to not to be bored)
• Seamless Ecosystem Integration

3. Express our Design Solution

Let's proceed with the wireframing stage where we were recollecting ideas on a broader level and the iteration was fixed in the final UI of the application.

High Fidelity Prototype

Click here to view the project `Locomote`

4. Analyze our solutions

Based on the initial defined success criteria/metrics lets quantify what we achieved with our solution in addition to the basic on-demand taxi services are :

1. Provide a sense of traffic density. (Increasing Relative accessibility of options)
2. Provide a sense of environmental pollution (factors such as AQI Index)(Engaging user to make a decision)
3. Option availing & exploring electric drive. (Findability)
4. Repeated affordances/nudge to and from among our innovative mobility services such as: focusing on shared, electrified mobility with miniature vehicles (e-scooter & e-bicycle).
5. Context-based help section. (Engaging Help & Support)
6. Easy switch between driver-based and self-driven option.
7. Ease in choosing payment options and marking the default method of payment. (Ease in Payment)
8. Seamless intuitiveness and clear visualization. (Ecosystem Integration)

Next Steps (Test for Discoverability & Learnability)

Considering our overlining strategy of inculcating discoverability and learnability towards the application we need to test for the same.

It can be hard to test for both of these concepts prior to implementing a design. They are a consequence of usage and as such even prototyping may not lead you to the answers that you seek when it comes to these concepts.

It may best to agree that you need to iterate a product from an alpha or beta version to a launch version to test learnability and discoverability. They should also be revisited at a later date once your user base has become more familiar with the product and you can gain a better understanding of how these concepts played out in “real life”.

Resources

1. https://www.interaction-design.org/
2. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/mobile-ux-design
3. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/02/comprehensive-guide-to-mobile-app-design/
4. Base Iteration frame of Uber Case Studies —https://uxdesign.cc/tagged/uber

Over the last week, I have been asked how does a simple concept of user experience being replicated to the interaction design or more specifically user interface implications. To encapsulate user’s attention more effectively with your design we sought to utilize these design strategies.

The strategy we would be discussing intensively here would be repetition. Repetition in design is different from perceived generally, it empowers design when used in the right way and ensures the messaging to be better understood. The three methods of repetition we would discuss are: repetition, patterns, and rhythm.

For the implication purposes, lets pounder on the problem statement of a customize-onboarding for Tesla new offering Cybertruck here on a mobile interface.

Repetition

Its simply repeating a single element many times in a design. For example, one could draw a line horizontally and then draw several others next to it. For example, you’d expect the logo of a business to be repeated on every page and in the same place. Menu items are also often repeated in the same place on a page. This helps provide a consistent user experience.

By repeating elements, we achieved not only deliver according to our users’ expectations in this way but also improve their experience. Being consistent made our users more comfortable. Remember that the eye works in a certain way by default. Using repetition to keep the eye familiar with our design’s elements means we’re taking advantage of this tendency. We did use shapes, colors, textures, fonts, etc. to maintain this consistency via repetition.

We achieved repetition by using repeated messages. If you want your customers to know that you’re the cheapest or the fastest in the business, you’ll want to tell them that on more than one occasion if you want the message to stick. For this instance, we use repetition for reinforcement. You may remember learning your time tables by repeating them until you drummed them into your mind. The principle here is the same. We retain information better the more often we encounter it and internalize it.

Pattern

These are simply: a repetition of more than one design element working in concert with each other.

A seamless pattern is one where every element within a design (no matter how often it’s repeated) combines to form a whole, most common in backgrounds on web and app pages.

Look around you: your bed cover, wall, notebook cover. If you see a seamless pattern, look at it closely. Do you see how the elements (circles, spirals, cones, pineapples, etc.) appear again and again in the same way? Sometimes, they touch; sometimes, they have space between them.

As you might expect, we based our most patterns on colors, textures, and shapes, including words(content). One can recognize shapes far more quickly than words, which we have to read, no matter how quickly. To enhance the aesthetic appeal.

Think of ancient Greek buildings such as the Parthenon. Ancient designers could be ingenious in their use of patterns of such elements as lines and spirals.

Rhythm

When one repeat elements, the intervals between those repetitions would create a sense of rhythm in the viewer and a sense of movement. Remember how Musicians create a rhythm in the spacing between notes, effectively making use of these “silent” gaps to play off the notes.

We would insert spacing between elements to make rhythm. There are, broadly speaking, five types of visual rhythm

• Random Rhythm
• Regular Rhythm
• Alternating Rhythm
• Flowing Rhythm
• Progressive Rhythm

What did we use here (←Here)

Progressive rhythm — It's done simply by changing one characteristic of a motif as we repeat it.

We could draw a series of circles, one above the other, making each lower one larger. Do you see how the largest one at the bottom looks like it’s closest to you?

We did make a progressive rhythm by subtly or dramatically changing series of screens. One could add shade to the smaller circles progressively so that the smallest one at the top is dark, the middle one in partial shade, and the biggest one only slightly shaded.

Progressive rhythms surround us. If you were to video someone dancing and then examine that video frame-by-frame, you would have a progressive rhythm.

Let's use these to shape the user experience for our app. Through repetition, patterns, or rhythm, we would set “the mood” of the user interface and use these elements to either reinforce our message and/or create the look and feel of the product.

Designing with Repetition — Pattern, Rhythm, and Repetition

When we employ the above-discussed techniques which designers generally forget to cash-on for providing a consistent visual experience. User’s focus on the content is made relatively smooth while enabling them to find specific types of cognitively complex content/navigation options.

Replicating relationships between the stage and the area of design content is seamlessly mapped in the prototype(on-left). Using it to show relationships between content blocks, too. Also, we used patterns for backgrounds to add texture and consistency and deploy them to deliver consistency between similar navigation.

We added rhythm to create excitement (building gradually over time) and reassurance (a self-customized cybertruck would be perfect on the success page aimed for making a buy, for example) and used it to influence other emotions too.

References

• Design in Art: Repetition, Pattern, and Rhythm. Sophia Learning. Retrieved from: http://www.sophia.org/tutorials/design-in-art-repetition-pattern-and-rhythm. [2014, Aug]
• Swinburne. Basic Design Principles. Retrieved from: http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/tutorials/design/design/#four. [2014 Aug]

While in the era of becoming “influencers” , there is a very slight chance people will just read and listen to content curated by a powerhouse until you give them the opportunity to build their own once in a while.

Objective

User-generated content(UGC) or in simpler terms as “electronic word-of-mouth” spreads heavily through an online medium which is a curated material by a non-media and has a greater influence on a multitude of institutions and users for their consumption. The following is the basis which has been derived from the literature review about the user-generated content to be achieved

1. has a positive effect on the perceived credibility
2. has a positive effect on the perceived usefulness
3. has a positive effect on the perceived risk

Literature Review

At this point of time, we test our basis with the market/customer’s natural behavior ( I like to call this as Contextual Literature review), to understand the need and perception. During our research across social platforms, scholarly articles, etc for our gender-specific(Women) demographic we come to the following conclusions:

• Majority of the women take pleasure conversing to someone in a field they are interested in
• Almost all of the women responded to using social media platforms for their day-to-day interactions.
• Young women seem to have an introvert side while communicating themselves.
• Women are seeking positive experience through the networking process and an urge to follow such individuals.

User Personas

Now post the analysis of the statement of purpose here, we started to understand the different types of user personas to be handled here before jumping onto the solution side.

A persona is a fictitious character who represents our target audience. The highlights of the persona are their goals and frustrations.

1. Aishwarya (The Leader):

1. Deepti (The Follower):

User Scenarios

Basis our user persona we start to look at their behavior as a user scenario and in-line our perceived customer/user journey as :

1. Aishwarya’s Scenario: A 24-year-old, recently promoted to a Business Development Manager position. She has always gone out of her way since her career starts from leaving a core-company to join the field of Sales as a challenge. She learned to be confident and empowered of her achievements while finding it hard to connect with people out of her work environment to share her story and feel connected to her creative side. Her interests in shopping to curating quick tricks around, she wants to be heard but find it difficult to share with a common interest community. Social media does provide her the option but she hates she is misunderstood there by people of other gender ideology.
2. Deepti’s Scenario: A 29-year-old, recently married lady hailing from one of the world’s known consulting firms. While she is starting to take on the hood of being a married woman; she finds herself de-railed from the path of reading and interacting with conversations she used to have it with her friends. She searches for an opportunity to look into people’s perspectives and understand life a step closer while she is still on the journey of it. She follows many of her idols but sees them no closer to what she is experiencing. She seeks an idol in making who is more to her grounds.

Design

We start with creating a synergy of navigation from the homepage of POPxo to the community homepage; where the millennial women will be looking forward to their interactions with the community and knowing more about it.

The major call-to-action portrayed is to “Know thy POPxo Community” because of the need to understand first what you get out of the community to push the user to a step closer to being part of.

While the next is the know-how around the working structure of the community and where it can benefit the women of our time into curating something they love — a Presence.

Resources

1. http://www.mktgsensei.com/AMAE/Internet%20Marketing/Customer%20Content%20and%20engagement.pdf
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567116301344
3. https://www.slideshare.net/ArunGupta52/problem-analysis-solution-for-popxocom

A design isn’t finished until somebody is using it.

Often or not we counter in our daily business operations from people who target to build things desirable for the user. While the question of what usability is compared to desirability is always seemed to be a lost cause in a Service UX design and is sought to be indistinguishable.

While usability is the basis of any user experience infrastructure without which its difficult to create a worthwhile experience wherein desirability make the experience memorable to the user.

Usability and Desirability

From the four levels of User experience defined by the Nielsen Norman group around the design in service and general

1. Utility

2. Usability

3. Desirability

4. Brand Experience

The solution to a problem (utility) and the ease of usage of such a solution(usability) seems enough for our users. While this could be true a decade earlier where solutions were less exploited, we should understand that user expects beyond usability with the growing need to interact with products which can stand apart(desirability).

For example, when Apple launched the iPod; it was not the first MP3 player or the most usable one, it had that unique blend of usability, utility, and desirability in it which created a wave of brand experience for its customers while moving up the value chain of user experience.

Principles of Service(UX) Design

• Design to be based on the purpose of service, the demand for the service, and the ability of oneself(company or individual) to deliver that service.
• Should be focused on customer needs rather than the need of the business(internal).
• Designed to deliver a unified and efficient outlook rather than taking a component-by-component which leads to a decline in overall service performance.
• Create value for users/customers and to be as much as efficient as possible.
• Designed on the understanding that special events/use-cases (those that cause variation in general processes and architecture) will be treated as common events (and processes designed to accommodate them)
• Services should always be designed with input from the users of the service
• Designed in conjunction with a clear business case and model with a prototype before the development push.
• Design and Developed as a minimum viable service/product (MVS) such that they can then be iterated and improved to add additional value based on user/customer feedback.

Real World Outlook: Delhivery’s Last Mile Ops

While working on a process improvement wherein a field executive marks a parcel pending for delivery when the operator is not able to deliver the same. Over the evolution of business, the field executive is asked to justify the same.

In the existing scenario, where the business operations have proposed an exhaustive list of these justifications (around 20) which from a business point of view covers all use cases but overlooks a basic principle of service design of creating special use-cases efficiently to be presented as common and used with ease.

On our initial discussion among business stakeholders, we realized

• First, Irregularities around the usage of these
• Second, the data interpretation by our product management along with their counterparts in operations also concluded a direct relationship to unclear information under operational pressure to these field executives.

Going by the principles of service design, understanding the contextual environment of the users(field executive) which impacted the

• First, being on the field impacts the attention span of the user under conditions such as bright sunlight, increased load.
• Second, being able to include curative edge cases around use cases specifically available based on the geo-location of the device.

However, at Delhivery we utilized our ground expertise to run a customized usability test using maze.design.

With this whole exercise, we established our key success metrics around the time spent to achieve(usability) and the emotional quotient(desirability) the process brings along.This proves that even though, one product is highly usable doesn’t imply its most desirable.

Conclusions

Service design in principle has the right proportions of usability in it, designers often tend to skip the part of desirability on the fact that the clients/operators are by-default going to use the product. We can surely conclude from the growing expenses around product iterations across to the likes of even Apple, Uber, etc that efficiency can prevail over creating value for the user.

In service design or design in general, we should understand the key difference between the two(usability & desirability) is that usability is a minimum requirement — there is no user experience without usability. Desirability changes a service/product from usable into something that a user wants to use.

Resources

1. https://www.interaction-design.org/
2. http://design4services.com/
3. https://moz.com/blog/applying-service-design-online
4. http://www.theservicedesignprogramme.org/2012/11/guest-post-10-principles-for-service-design/
5. http://www.slideshare.net/smercer0114/beyond-just-usability-desirability-and-usefulness-testing

Service Design: Usability or Desirability? was originally published in Design@Delhivery on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are going to evaluate the POPxo Mobile Application basis the common rule of thumb from both of their approaches as follow :

Resources

1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.luxeva.popxo&hl=en_IN
2. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/shneiderman-s-eight-golden-rules-will-help-you-design-better-interfaces
3. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/heuristic-evaluation-how-to-conduct-a-heuristic-evaluation

We start with the literature review across the approaches of the car dealers into the current offline model across many of the second hand automobiles shop and their noted experiences and factors involved . While the IndianBlueBook determines the pre-owned car market size accounts to 3.6 million units which sees an increase of 9% from 2016, impacted very heavily by the demonetization diminishing the said market by a factor of 6%. They put the nominal market size as 3.8 million units with a growth rate of 15%.

While basis the Capegemini’s report on Online B2C Sales for Automotive Suppliers ; indicates that there is strong consumer interest towards the online purchase of pre- owned automotives , particularly in growth markets such as India . While this likely become a key aspect of how the industry operates, giving Tier 1 suppliers (Tier 1s or Established Car Dealership ) an important opportunity to strengthen their position noting the challenges for the online edition of sales as :

• Logistics services and distribution management
• Returns management
• Dedicated IT infrastructure
• Parts installation services and warranty effects
• Regulatory requirement fulfillment
• Environmental sustainability

Considering the noted challenges we try to revolutionize the way consumers purchase products and services through an e-commerce platform for the automotive industry. Currently such digital channels are primarily used for research in the “interest” phase of the purchase cycle, unlike ; consumer products and retail where buying online is common.

Objectives

While we see the organized and semi-organized car dealers taking on the market segment of roughly around 51% while the pre-owned car market shows a growth of 9% year on year. We are going to target a user research for these car dealers to understand their key pain points effecting their approach in buying a set package for an online e-commerce platform impacting their understanding . We would dig deep into understanding the following objectives :

• Know your customers
• Choosing the right business package for their e-commerce discovery
• How do they Partner online with an automotive consumer
• Anticipation and analysis

Methodology

Over the course of the defined timeline (current basis of 3 months), we would conduct an in-depth ethnographic study to detail the used car selling journey from start to finish. Following are the variety of methods we tend to employ including a usability studies at the end to validate the Research .

1. Dealership observation and intercepts(Field studies)

The team to observe couple of car dealerships in both rural and urban areas to unbias the sample . Over the next period of days , the team is to observe and record interactions between shoppers, salespeople, finance staff, dealers and managers . Also to conduct 25, 10- to 30-minute interviews with sellers and dealership staff about their approach to create a basis for user personas to target.

For recording the user data which have been received we would be working on the User Research Template for field studies over Airtable and taking on the field notes basis the AIEOU framework since this phase marks as a start of our ethnographic studies

• A: Activities are goal-directed sets of actions/things which user want to accomplish.
• E: Environments include the entire environment or are where activities take place.
• I: Interactions are between a user and target and their relationship maturation which is the building blocks of activities
• O: Objects are building blocks of the environment or key elements sometimes put to complex or unintended uses, thus changing their function, meaning and context.
• U: Users are the consumers or the people providing the behaviors, preferences, and needs structure to understand the behavior

Field Kits: Capturing Data During Ethnographic Research | Macadamian

2. Participant Self Observation(Diary studies)

Basis the several personas that have been dug out of the initial field studies we follow these user personas as they blog or describe themselves about their selling experience and the behaviors attached to the same while they upload content(photos and videos etc) , engage and interact. This period enables us to include their contextual behaviors from the story told by them .

Here we would be targeting to understand these key pointers :

• How the seller perceive their consumer’s path to purchase : i.e. what triggers a car search , where is the sellers interaction journey with a client ignites from
• How do they identify consumers as comfortable and confident to a one starting fresh into their research.
• what are the key methods they imply to research their customers

While post this documentation , we would be analyzing the input basis finding a theme and characterizing the behavior into our research system template at airtable. This approach is briefly being discussed as to how to characterize the diary studies into information themes in User Interviews- A Thematic Approach.

Research System Template - Airtable Universe

3. Ethnographic Interviews and Tag Alongs (Contextual Inquires)

Now we select individuals on a sample basis of the personas (two to three) for a contextual interviews in their work environment in both urban and rural setup including their client visits for tag along and reporting the same in the AIEOU framework. The themes which have been defined in the previous phase are going to be put to test and validated in this process . While on the client visits to make the deal or to showcase the car , we target to get our answers on :

• what drives their consideration into the customer’s pursuit.
• Consideration throughout the journey from a close watch throughout the journey
• Understanding the behavior when shoppers just don’t necessarily buy the cars they search

4. Co-Design Sessions with Participants (Initial Prototyping & Usability Studies)

While in this process we caters to the participating dealers in a moderated co-design sessions to reimagine the aspects of the car selling experience at various points in their selling process. All the participants starts with their sell target and had they been using or willing to use the internet for their sell , research or advertisements in the demographics we got from the field studies.

Before jumping on the design we cater to these were the short term logistics goals based questionnaire :

• How easy is to know what and why are they offering certain set of vehicles and is it easy to get to?
• What are the sales hours?
• Do they have a large inventory?
• Do they have the specific car customers want to see?
• How are their prices and features trade varies?
• Will they take my trade?

while also considering the long term service and relationship points questionnaire with their clients in term of :

• What is the reputation of their service department?
• how to establish a trust in their dealership for service?
• how convenient is to service here and how can the same be availed at different places?
• Do they offer any maintenance perks and how they cover the same ?
• Does this dealership have a lot of repeat customers and how would you maintain a database of such returning customers?

Now we start to figure this into an initial set of prototypes and user journey flows , where we take onto the feasibility of any usability issues arisen and their encountering methods . We would be including these findings in our qualitative user research input with the name of the participants , their responses , usability issues noted along with a heuristic basis to categorize the usability issues into severity basis for re-iteration of our prototypes .

Qualitative User Research - Airtable Universe

Resources

1. http://www.cmsadmin.indianbluebook.com/storage/app/media/Insights/India-Pre-Owned-Car-Market-Report-2nd-Edition-2017.pdf
2. https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/online_b2c_sales_for_automotive_suppliers.pdf
3. https://airtable.com/universe/expYAfFWIN1QH1PUZ/qualitative-user-research
4. https://www.silearning.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ethnographic-fieldnotes.pdf
5. https://www.macadamian.com/learn/field-kits-capturing-data-during-ethnographic-research/
6. https://airtable.com/universe/expqUCqLQkpKQtHWq/research-system-template

With the Gen X-er debating since they have options to seamlessly order online and then pick up their order from a delivery guy which almost alike a robot’s making all this happens. While some of the tech-savvy restaurants aims at offering food fresh, affordable , fast with a pretty unconventional twist of replacing the old-fashioned waiters and cashiers to everything-in-your-hand-experience.

• While booking a table at a restaurant and visiting the same still have the popularity index of 22 out of 100 compared to ordering food online (i.e. 41 out of 100) , we see a considerable amount of orders still made from the dine out options .
• While roughly around 61 % of the target audience dine-out more than once in a week .
• Around 60% of the target audience read previous costumer reviews before trying something new at the restaurant.
• While 80% of the customers find it difficult to come to an order while browsing through a “huge” restaurant menu.

Business Needs

To start with the business needs (over here Restaurants) , we need to start with the challenges faced and the process followed to describe the

One of the main challenges in many businesses that are based on customer orders, product preparation and delivery to the customer is the time of order registry to delivery. Reducing this time will lead to customer satisfaction and consequently will improve business.

1. Avoid wasting time of staffs .
2. provide further information on electronic menus.
3. The customer is not under pressure of time for ordering .
4. The benefits of electronic payments .
5. better and easier management of restaurant .
6. avoid congestion on the counter payment .
7. Ability to reduce the work force, such as the removal of cashier 8.
8. prevent errors in billing .
9. prevent the possibility of ordering error .
10. provide interesting entertainment in the time between order and delivery
11. Ability to change the menu easily .
12. Taking mobile number from customers to inform them about changes .
13. possibility to be used besides the traditional method without any interference

Approach

Now we would try to think from the user’s perspective to design a system to be able to add advantages including online(In-App) bill payment , user-engagement while ordering and getting the goods delivered to. This to be achieved by reviewing restaurants that take advantage of the electronic menu and usage of means for customer to use it .

While we would be going with the concept of reducing one less mobile application which a new user would not be downloading and embedding this as a quick web application where user just gets into the mood of ordering if he/she is at the table.

1. User Research

We take a user persona in a more generalized fashion of a target of people who are stationed around the restaurants (mostly in tech parks or work hubs) as “What are hungry office workers really looking for when the clock hits for lunch and dinner?” considering a heuristic analysis of the same behavior as :

• Customers/Workers want to browse their lunch options quickly and easily before logging in to make a purchase.
• Customers/Workers need as much customization as possible to make their integrated dining experience as personable as going to their favorite restaurant and asking the waiter to help them out, including their dietary restriction accommodations.
• A need of flexibility to choose when and where their food is delivered so they can eat even after that “mandatory lunch meeting” they didn’t plan for.

2. Customer Challenges

1. Low glance-ability ; the menu is more of bible which contains so many things but not an easy access per sei the mood and items .
2. lack of visual content ; the menu doesn’t reflect the preparation , since many of the user have selective methods of preparation in mind ; some of them have allergy to certain inclusive items , food style such as vegan etc.
3. No personalization ; the most important factor of ordering via a waiter is of personalization , while some of them support but mostly this is ignored which is a drop down indicator to the user’s experience.

3. User Needs

Based on the existing approach of user towards the F&B online industry and the user research conducted these were the user need basis curated :

1. Selecting a dish in the restaurant is impacted by : cuisine type, amount , preparation time.
2. Need to be aware of the progress of the order : so as if a customer wants to make a last minute alteration , reduce miscommunication.
3. Realization of Atmosphere and presentation

Design Reflection

We start with our design reflection with assumptions such as

• the user is landed to the restaurant from some of the well-known discovery platform which can either be a google search or any online table booking applications etc.
• the unique ID is with the Table assigned to the customer , since that provides us with the number of people arrived and remains as a single unique reference for both customer and restaurant management.

Basis the first iteration , we collect user’s feedback and trying to map the same to the heuristic principles:

• How does the user view the same experience as of the traditional restaurant experience to one where no human interaction is to be ? (Match between system and the real world)
• How do the user after exiting out of the application gets back to the same order menu step?(Recognition rather than recall & Navigation)
• How does the status of the order is being notified to the user?(Visibility of system status)

So we take on to the next step of prototype iteration basis the above feedback before we take on the Hi-Fi Designs .

Now considering the inputs received from the prototype iteration we start with out final hifi prototypes :

Resources

1. https://iaiest.com/dl/journals/8-%20IAJ%20of%20Innovative%20Research/v2-i12-dec2015/paper1.pdf
2. https://www.irjet.net/archives/V3/i12/IRJET-V3I1213.pdf
3. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=book%20restaurant,order%20food%20online
4. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=71&date=all&q=book%20restaurant,order%20food%20online,takeaway

With the incursion of the computer age in this era , we have set ourselves on path forth of digital experiences . We were made to realize that we are have to consider the actual entity in the any product creation i.e. THE USER . We have to consider all the three level of design while we present ourselves to a problem rather than just solutioning .

In this article we would be taking onwards the system design of Online Help Systems which are crucial in utilization of computing resources . These help systems being consistently in touch with the users and their day-to-day problems offers an opportunity to bridge this gap between the user’s need for simplicity and the complexity offered by the Software , providing vital information with very specific context of user’s lack of adeptness and familiarity at a particular task or concept.

Approach ( Identification)

We will be starting with a mix of the Literature Review and going through online social forums as our basis for initial problem statement research to come up with a hypothesis which would be tested on iteratively.

Based on our initial research we have identified the basis of a high quality online help systems as characterized by:

• constant availability: help should available at all times;
• consistent user interface: access to and presentation of help information should be the same throughout the system;
• completeness: all aspects in every detail should be covered, without loose ends;
• context sensitivity: help obtained should be targeted to the user’s specific context;
• adaptability: help should be customized to the user’s preference (O’Malley et al., 1983; Orwick et al., 1986)

Assumptions

• user group is located in a relatively centralized community: onsite employees or in the same vicinity ;
• help is required for a diverse range of software, hardware, and applications;
• help should be more task-sensitive and time critical: for example, an onsite employee may be closing a financial agreement and stuck on the very last action of printing the agreement ; .
• some confidential information is involved: such as social security number and financial turnover numbers of a ;
• high stress of concurrency and seasonal periodicity of access stress: for example, a final week of financial year ending should have much higher volume than does a winter break.

Scenario

John is ACME financial consultant, and he is using a company Windows 10 laptop. One morning, John realized that he is not able to open a PowerPoint presentation on his computer. He sends an email to ACME Help Desk. After just a couple of minutes, John receives a reply from Adam, a ACME Help Desk agent. John is not completely sure if he understands the resolution outlined in that email, so he picks up the phone and calls Adam to further clarify on next steps. After Adam successfully guided John to resolve the issue, they both now consider the case to be closed and they wish each other a good and productive work-day.

Key Use Cases

We would be taking the task flows of the two entities involved here i.e. Employee(John) and Helpdesk Agent(Adam) to understand and impart the design thinking into easing the process.

For Employee :

1. Create a Support Ticket :

• Go to Helpdesk web application and Create a New Ticket.
• Choose your Department and Role along with the Employee ID.

To filter the range of software/hardware/applications used , business precedent and criticality , avoid any breach in confidential information.

• Select the Category of the ticket (Software /Hardware / Application) .
• (For Example: Software) Select the Software to which is the issue is related.
• If the issue is already present in the Commonly Faced Issues List, then select the issue from the issue list ; if not create a new issue with uploading supporting document/screenshot/video(optional) while agreeing to the Terms and Conditions.
• If the issue is from the commonly faced issues list , User will be presented with a brief summary and steps to solve the same but if not happy with the solution ; a user can create a fresh new ticket to with uploading supporting document/screenshot/video(optional) while agreeing to the Terms and Conditions.
• User is provided with a unique Ticket ID for future reference.

2. Track an Existing Ticket:

• Go to Helpdesk web application and Track an existing Ticket.
• Search via Ticket ID or Employee ID and Ticket Status.
• User Views the Ticket Audit Trail and if any textual resolution are provided by the Helpdesk Agent with supporting help documents.
• User have option to re-open the ticket and accept the resolution and rate the resolution.

For Helpdesk Agent :

1. Resolve a Support Ticket :

• Login to Helpdesk Application.
• On the dashboard under different categories , user chooses to see the tickets assigned .
• User chooses a ticket and views the details .
• User can either contact the employee who have raised and give resolution online or can provide a Textual Resolution with supporting help documents and mark the ticket as “Resolved”.
• While marking the ticket as “Resolved” , the user have to select the channel of communication used to resolve the ticket.

Design Conclusions

In this exercise we examined the online help system in a specific domain of the above mentioned scenario for a financial firm setup . Through our literature review and examination of organizational and human behavioral issues for different kind of help systems available currently we present our solution. Since the foundation of our research was quite focused on “what users really want” into depicting specific design implications so forth. The constructive thoughts include developing more time-critical and task-sensitive online help, merging CMC approaches, and customizing online help in terms of different user groups, and so forth.

Running Prototype- Overflow:

Resources

1. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7f81/6d84f8d340fca0759c2b651930d170586c09.pdf
2. https://www.spiceworks.com/it-articles/it-help-desk/
3. https://www.teamsupport.com/blog/must-have-help-desk-ticketing-system-features
4. https://uxplanet.org/filing-a-complaint-a-ux-case-study-b0d5d6e188c8
5. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/norman-s-three-levels-of-design
6. O’Malley, C., Smolensky, P., Bannon, L., Conway, E., Graham, J., Sokolov, J. and Monty, M.L. (1983), “A proposal for user centered system documentation”, Proceedings of the CHI’83 Conference: Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, New York, NY, pp. 282–5.

Considering the increasingly high number of registered motor vehicle in India which accounts as total of 21,00,23,289 as on 31.03. 2015 wherein 7 states having more than 1,00,00,000 registered motor vehicles viz. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh as on 31.03. 2015 , comparing this to the parking space available in the city is woefully short with the amount of vehicles added per year. For example , city of Pune with an assumption of having only mere 35% of the 25 Lakh registered vehicles being a motor vehicle (e.g. car ), it has only parking facilities of around 1800 in public and nearby office areas wherein Pune is not yet a metro city .

While we kick start with the initial problem statement research , we would be effectively looking achieve the following three goals.

• Firstly, task analysis which is concerned with users’ needs. From the user’s ability to find a parking space ; pay for that space and if needs arise the ability to extend the time paid etc are some of the factors which impacts the user goals. The task analysis stage is vital since it helps us verify our initial product hypothesis and explicitly states the flow of events (cognitive effort); the procedure that the user’s mental model goes through in successfully completing a task.
• Second, being reliability; with the premise that the user’s trust and attention seems very fragile. A bad experience with the interface can easily cause the person(s) to be disparaged. The functionalities must function as specified thus the interface must be capable of maintaining service and service quality.
• Lastly ‘Know thy user’[ Hasen (1971) ] since people are different and they therefore learn, think and solve problems in different ways. We will be building on the understanding of the intended user community inclusively, that is, a population profile that reflects age, physical and cognitive abilities(demographics) .User’s gender, education, cultural and ethical background is vital as with such an understanding it helps a designer unpack several user communities for the design. For example, professionals such as doctors, users in different regions or countries, urban or rural users, economic profiles, users with disabilities and users with limited reading skills.

“Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” — Nigel Bevan (1995)

Approach

We will be starting with a mix of the Literature Review and going through online social forums as our basis for initial problem statement research to come up with a hypothesis which would be tested on iteratively.

Initial proposals based on our Literature Review and market analysis has provided us with various stereotypes that could be expanded upon while defining the user personas:

• Professional, capable
• Professional, beginner
• Tourist , Foreign language speaker , Virtually Disabled, Novice

These have been narrowed down into the following three categories:

1. Professional (High ability; aim for “Ease of use”)

2. Disabled

3. Beginner (Low ability; aim for “Learnability”)

Each persona will need to cover a broad range of possible use cases, but still be a believable character.

Questionnaire

1. Define your day when you take your car to office and to do daily chores , while comparing when you don’t.
2. How do you choose a parking spot , what are the factors you would consider?
3. If given option , what are the factors that you would like to introduce in your own customized parking space?
4. How do you Accomplishing effective parking booking in the hustling hours of the day?

User Scenarios

A number of key- likely scenarios pertaining to car parking have been identified:

• User is in a rush
• User is curious about car parking apps
• User needs confidence in being able to park

Each persona will be assigned a main scenario: their primary purpose and context for use of the app. In addition, further scenarios, designed to test the functionality and usability of our prototypes, will be assigned to each persona. As such, each persona will have the above scenarios to bear in mind while performing the singular task of getting a parking slot while meeting the additional factors such as payment , duration , covered or uncovered parking etc.

Putting User Personas into Journey Task Flow

While both of the personas have been given similar task flows for their journey , we yield out several key pointers which implicates they need to go by their routine sometimes while with an ease .

Design Conclusion

While in the iterative discussion and analysis of user behavior around the proposed task flows (based on persona mapping), we did the following finding :

• Choosing a Parking space is impacted by several factors like ; feasibility from the desired(e.g office) location , payment modes , timing and duration , whether it is a covered or uncovered parking .
• Sometimes the ability of the driver itself is being put into ask when there are different types of parking available at the parking lot like angled , perpendicular , parallel etc which requires more dedicated drivers like valets.
• The interfaces the user will be handy with while driving the cars since some of the cars have got inbuilt functionalities of navigation using integration from apps Like Android Auto , Apple Car Play etc which invites the need for design and integration into them as they provide more handsfree solutions.

Presenting our initial design solution towards the problem statement we discussed around.

References

• https://community.data.gov.in/registered-motor-vehicles-in-india-as-on-31-03-2015/
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/auto/auto-news/for-25-lakh-registered-vehicles-city-has-parking-space-for-1800/articleshow/45675573.cms?from=mdr
• Michael Watts, Spender. 2017. inviUX Case study: A parking payment app — Prototypr. [ONLINE] Available at: https://blog.prototypr.io/case-study-parkmobile-2a37b615d8e6.
• W. J. Hansen, “User Engineering Principles for Interactive Systems”in Fall Joint Computer Conference, pp. 523–532, AFIPS Press, Mondale, NJ (1971).