An electric bicycle is not a choice accessible to everyone, especially those who just need a vehicle for a short term.
The goal is to create an alternative solution to purchasing an e-bike for those who have difficulties paying the full price.
A web-app prototype allowed me to test the idea and confirmed that users would benefit from this service.
I was responsible for the entire product. From research, conducting user interviews, synthesizing and prioritizing goals, brainstorm ideas to finally designing and testing the solution. I created informed based design such as wireframes, low fidelity and high fidelity prototypes, iterating insights along the process.
I adopted a design thinking process that allowed me to understand and empathise with the customer's needs and generate ideas based on evidence.
The discovery phase allowed me to define the business goals, review the competitors, understand our market and client visions, analyze users needs, behaviors and pain points.
To better understand how people approach buying bikes and what they look for and identify potential problems I conducted a user interview before diving into creating a solution.
The initial interview revealed that:
To better guide our design, and empathise with the users I synthesized the interviews and come up with two main personas:
Knowing who exactly I was designing for allowed me to ask myself how Advantage would fit into the lives of the users.
I imagined ideal experiences and focused on how our personas think and behave to align content and features. This gave me a way to visualise what content would be useful and what were the possible opportunities to improve.
From the initial research, I then prioritized the following problems:
Based on the research, I opted to build a web app prototype, where the big picture will be communicated through the home page; and the guided filter should help the user with their selection.
Possible solutions and ideas that came from the brainstorming session were:
Note that some of the solutions were not examined from a business side, it would have required business experts to validate the feasibility and develop a business plan
Looking at competitors, I was surprised to discover that there weren't any direct competitors in Australia. Here is a quick overview:
Empathising with the users, allowed me to imagine the big picture and how our product could help users.
After identifying the main scenario, I outlined the primary pathways our personas would take while interacting with our product.
Before moving into low fidelity prototype, I used paper rapid sketching to get a feel and establish the basic structure of what the web app would look like. My strategy to create wireframes is to quickly sketch two/three different layouts per page, highlight the best parts and finally compose a foundation for a prototype.
The home screen gives a brief overview of the service and features provided.
A chat, to support users at any time, is easily accessible by the button in the right corner, or the menu.
A guided experience is designed to assist users in choosing a bike and membership in a clear and simple flow minimising distractions.
The filter will show only available items based on the input entered, to limit the number of unwanted items and reduce the user effort.
Before proceeding to design the high fidelity prototype, I needed to figure out what were the specific challenges that users might have faced during the guided process of ordering and choosing their e-bike plan.
I opted for an unmoderated usability study through Maze.co, where I tested 8 participants.
Insights
To maintain consistency, I developed a design system, based on reusable components and states. This allowed me to quickly make changes while building the mockup.
Advantage has received both positive and negative feedback since our last test. Users have responded well to the design iteration and shown an improvement in the overall usability score.
There are still improvements to be made, for instance, there is big confusion and drop rate on step 3 “Details” of the guided filter, and the participants requested a more detailed explanation about the pricing information.
When asked the 23 participants "how likely are you to subscribe to our plan?", 35% of users were highly interested in using Advantage solution to own an electric bike, while 61% showed interest and might benefit from it.
Working on this project let me practice and opened my mind to a more holistic approach, and reinforced my view on how crucial is to have a broad understanding of the business goal. I learned some important takeaways from this project related to product and business processes.
