Digitizing Electric Vehicle Service
CLIENT:
Trueno
BUSINESS CHALLENGE:
Launching an electric vehicle service in Mumbai integrated with IoT based technology.
OUTCOME:
Intuitive navigation and accessibility of the electric vehicle through a mobile application, vehicle branding and marketing.
Trueno is an Electric vehicle shared mobility startup based out of Mumbai, India. Their vision is to accelerate India towards a sustainable, green and clean future. Digital integration of the IoT technology on the application makes their product and service unique.
Design Methodology
The design process started with understanding stakeholder vision and needs for the company. Through research and analysis, design decisions were made to create the application. Testing the application led to re-defining the brief for a different set of users.
Problems
Understanding the needs and potential in the market, the team drew problems that can be tackled by the company.
Less preference to public transport during COVID 19
Negative health
impacts from traffic and congestion
Inconvenient pick up and drop points for rentals
Most polluted cities exists in India
Solution
The solution proposed by the company was to provides electric vehicles to users in the city for both short and long distances on the basis of a subscription or pay per ride model. My role was to implement the solution.
Electric vehicles
Tech enabled:
Keyless travel
Doorstep delivery
On-the-go
battery swap
Who are the users?
The project started with business understanding of the user.
User Research plan
A user research plan was created to accomplish certain tasks in a short time period. The goal of this research was to identify the right target audience for the service and validate the hypotheses about users' needs.
Personas
The research focused on the current lifestyle and commute of users. Their needs, pain points and motivations were identified. We inferred that although there are threats to the service, there are certain personas that could be the "early adopters". Additionally, we understood that businesses as users have a wider scope.
![[ PERSONA ].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6bc77e_4ef1aae0f8d440a795d34f3485d16000~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_40,y_5,w_394,h_861/fill/w_235,h_513,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5B%20PERSONA%20%5D.jpg)
![[ PERSONA ] – 2.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6bc77e_4cde177b016b4a65b4f7d90ee60bce82~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_44,y_3,w_389,h_861/fill/w_231,h_513,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5B%20PERSONA%20%5D%20%E2%80%93%202.jpg)
![[ PERSONA ] – 1.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6bc77e_b106948eaec644e7bdb0d2dea009d4fa~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_40,y_10,w_394,h_854/fill/w_236,h_507,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5B%20PERSONA%20%5D%20%E2%80%93%201.jpg)
![[ PERSONA ] – 3.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6bc77e_75b71e9e4ede4ef9a0e309eb6ab2346d~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_45,y_18,w_392,h_846/fill/w_235,h_507,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5B%20PERSONA%20%5D%20%E2%80%93%203.jpg)
Feature set ideation
Ideation covered both short and long term ideas. For the initial stage, "must have" and "good to have" features were developed for the minimum viable product.
User flow
Minimum viable features were used to create the user flow. Flows were detailed out for first time users and registered users.
Wireframes
Login and registration
Tutorial
Home pages
The onboarding screens had a simple flow but an interactivity aspect to persuade users to subscribe to the vehicle.
On registration, tutorial screens help users understand how to use the service. Illustrations and a progress bar ease the process.
The home page is designed relavant to a user's stage on the app –signed up and not subscribed to the vehicle; subscribed but waiting for the vehicle to arrive and started using the vehicle.
Navigation bar
The navigation bar gives emphasis on the total distance covered along with fuel and carbon savings. It also involves features considering other scenarios that users might require during their journey.
The navigation bar
How to ride
Trip History
Safety Guidelines
Profile
Verification
Usability Testing
When the service was launched, customers were enthusiastic about the EV and the keyless technology. There were also individuals that found the "need" of subscribing to an EV, like we hypothesized in the user research. Some of these users were also inclined towards purchasing the vehicle. While deploying vehicles, the team interacted with local businesses that provide delivery services, like restaurants, medical stores and milk men. This is where the company found its niche and started deploying more and more vehicles to smaller businesses.
App for individuals
What we have
In the first version of the application, only the riders could track their vehicles. This was not feasible for businesses since the business owners couldn't track all their vehicles. Consequently, app needed to be revamped to incorporate different scenarios for a business user. Slowly, the company connected with giant delivery companies like Swiggy, Zomato, and Fedex, and learnt that the vehicles were owned by individual delivery agents and not the business. Hence, the company deployed vehicles to these delivery agents to understand their usage scenarios.
Individuals (include the persona of buyers and delivery agents)
Small business owners (present); Large business owners (future)
What we need
Sometimes, time is so tight that you have limited UX research before the product launch. Research post-launch and quickly fix the issues you discover.
User Research 2.0
The aim of user research at this stage was to understand the needs of the new customer segment in addition to feedback on the original application. For this, more than 20 different users were interviewed, such as pharmacy managers, milk men, restaurant owners and other delivery agents.
User Scenarios
From interviews and discussions with users, we identified multiple user scenarios that would help build on the flow and features of the new application.
Individual scenarios
Individual scenarios
Business scenarios
Business scenarios
Business scenarios
User Flows
From the user research, a user flow for pre-subscription and post subscription was created.
Final Outcome
Home page
The home page was redesigned based on feedback from old and user research of new customers. The first step in the process would be to choose the vehicle for individual, business or purchase in order to provide specific needs.
Bookings
Individual
Business
Purchase
For users who need the vehicle for a few hours upto a few months. These users include delivery agents who work in slots, and need the vehicle only during those slots.
Allows the user to subscribe for more than one vehicle. The tenure selection is in months; longer the tenure lesser the cost.
This gives an option to contact the company for more information before purchase.
Individual subscription
Post-subscription
Home Screen
Trip History List
Trip History Map
Profile
The individual post-subscription screens remain almost unchanged from the previous model. However, additional features of adding a business profile and assigning vehicle to family members helped target a wider audience.
Business subscription
Post-subscription
Home Screen:
Map View
Post-subscription
Home Screen:
Map View; Tags ON
Post-subscription
Home Screen:
List View
Trip History
The business post-subscription covered scenarios specific to business owners as well as riders. It helped owners assign vehicles to riders in no time and track all vehicles at once. To track, flexibility of changing the vehicle tag was provided to help in recall rather than recognition. Options for views (map and list) provided better accessibility.
Navigation bar
Your subscriptions
Assign vehicles
Business Profile
Expected outcomes and Future scope
We expect that Trueno's application and integrated IoT based technology will get more individuals and small businesses to use their electric vehicles and be sustainable and cost-efficient. The ease of use, tracking and assigning vehicles, in addition to being sustainable and cost-efficient has the potential to solve all the identified problems.
As the company starts capturing smaller businesses and agents of larger businesses, it will enter the larger companies with vehicle ownership. This will allow their application to expand to larger business and establish a novel portal for vehicle tracking. Trueno can also expand as a hub: connecting different users and creating a collaborative economy in cities.
Learnings and Reflection
This project challenged me in every way – convincing the team to conduct user research, working in tight timelines to launch the service and collaborating with engineers and marketers as an individual designer to communicate my ideas. As in-depth as the user research got, this project challenged me to design for different sets of users and integrate each of their specific needs in a single application. This was also my first time integrating the application with a physical product (electric vehicle) and I am happy that I was successful in delivering my best. As overwhelming as this project got, it was a lot of learning + fun.
