2023 - 2024
MileBox:
design thinking applied to logistics innovation.
At Innovobot Labs, I joined the MileBox incubator team with a mission: transform a bold concept into a market-ready product. MileBox aimed to revolutionize urban last-mile delivery, enabling operational efficiency while lowering costs and carbon footprints.
I led market research and user discovery, diving deep into the needs and frustrations of potential users. Through design thinking, I turned insights into actionable product requirements and designed a fleet management dashboard—the core of MileBox's MVP. This process transformed abstract ideas into a cohesive product vision, culminating in a functional prototype that set the stage for its spin-off as a standalone company.
Navigating the intricate interplay between mechanical systems, IoT hardware, and software design was both challenging and rewarding. My background in mechanical engineering and my expertise in design thinking and innovation proved invaluable in crafting a solution that seamlessly bridged these domains, bringing MileBox to life.
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.