April 2023 - February 2024
MileBox:
design thinking applied to logistics innovation.
During my time as UX designer at Innovobot Labs, I was assigned to the MileBox incubator team to help take an idea to a final product to be spun off into its own company. The objective was to design a product helping urban last mile delivery companies achieve operational efficiency at a low cost and with a low carbon footprint.
I helped the team by leading market and user discovery efforts and utilizing design thinking methodologies to create detailed product requirements and designing of a fleet management dashboard to complete the initial MVP that brought MileBox to market. Understanding the challenges and the human motivations of our potential customers and users, and translating that into a cohesive product vision proved the key challenge our team had to surmount.
Applying design thinking practices to the design of a product that is three parts mechanical system, hardware (IoT) and software (UX/UI) proved an interesting and complex challenge where my background as a mechanical engineer came in handy!
Discovery & requirement mapping:
utilising market and customer research to drive user-story based requirements.
In order to bridge the gap between the initial concept and the MVP product that we aimed to launch, we decided that a user-story based approach would enable our multidisciplinary team to understand and align on the product direction. I performed comprehensive secondary research into global last mile delivery and micro-mobility markets. I then interviewed over 30 key stakeholders in the market space ranging from cargo bike users to manufacturers and operators.
This enabled me to understand and document the trends in the market space, and to create affinity maps and user/customer personas. These insights and personas were utilized to write comprehensive user-stories that would map out the whole system design requirements. The user stories helped our team set clear product objectives and design direction, as well as enabled us to validate critical engineering design decisions as they came up.
Prototyping and usability testing:
iterative design practices applied to physical product design.
The team then began to build our first prototypes. We made use of the user stories to take informed part sourcing decisions and to explain our design intent to our different contractors and suppliers. During this phase of the project, I also took on the role of sourcing coordinator for certain subsystems such as the cargo box. My understanding of the design intent was useful in assuring that the subsystems performed to specification (and ultimately to user-requirement).
Once initial prototypes were build, I organized user testing both with our internal staff and with potential customers. We placed early bike prototypes in the hands of operators enabling us to quickly test the roadworthiness and usability of our bike. This enabled us to quickly obtain usable insights and make design adjustments to fit user and customer needs.
Dashboard design:
from insights to final prototype.
For the dashboard design, I utilized insights gleamed during discovery interviews as well as from chatting with different partners and operators during the prototype testing phase to build requirements and user stories for the dashboard design. These included requirements for both internal MileBox staff which would be interfacing with the dashboard during production, commissioning and fleet troubleshooting; as well as for operators, bike mechanics and riders who would interface with deferent pieces of the front-end depending on their level of access and required work tasks.
I then utilized these requirement to sketch out different screens and user flows. These were shared with the MileBox design team and certain partners to receive feedback and confirm design direction. I then built a first hi-fi prototype in Figma complete with interactions so that we could test our different work flows. This prototype was then used to program the first version of the dashboard that would be sold as a complement to the bike for fleet operators.
Results:
first fleet sales in North America and Europe
MileBox has successfully begun commissioning fleets for North American partners such as Intelcom and other last mile delivery companies in Europe. Some of these fleet sales were a direct result of discovery interviews and prototype testing phases that occured throughout the design process demonstrating the power of Design Thinking in not only building products that meet user needs, but also in enabling early customer engagement that can lead to long term business success.