Enabling a more efficient and consistent vehicle inspection process
Greenfield project looking at how efficiencies could be made to a vehicle collection experience. I worked in a small team to design from the ground up a mobile app that would give Motorway visibility of the collection process but also ensure all involved stakeholder got value.
Overview
Motorway, a leading vehicle marketplace in the UK, recognised the need for enhancing the effectiveness and precision of their vehicle inspection procedures. To address this, the company initiated the development of an in-house tool named Motorway Collect. This app was designed to optimise the inspection and delivery procedures carried out by drivers responsible for collecting vehicles from sellers and transporting them to dealerships.
The Driver Inspection App aimed to revolutionise Motorway's previously manual and fragmented vehicle inspection process by providing a comprehensive solution tailored for third-party drivers engaged in vehicle collection and delivery.
Client
Motorway
Timescale
2023 - 2024
Role
Product Designer, Workshop facilitation, Stakeholder management, Rapid prototyping, User research, Visual design,
The challenge
The initial challenge was identifying and validating wether this was indeed a problem worth solving,
Within the market current products were in use and there was a process in place. So despite the opportunity being there, it was important to identify the real problem, to do so I was able to get hands on, meeting real users and experiencing the role for myself.
Real-Life Shadowing
The design process commenced with real-life shadowing of vehicle collections and inspections, providing a first-hand understanding of the current process, its challenges, and potential opportunities for improvement.Stakeholder Interviews
Interviews were conducted with drivers and dealers to understand their requirements, pain points, and deal-breakers. The team aimed to grasp the factors that mattered the most to them and why, thereby ensuring the app adequately addressed their needs.Market Due Diligence
The team analysed existing industry applications to understand what worked well and what did not. This allowed us to build on successful aspects and improve upon the pain points in existing systems.
The solution
Research presented us with valuable insight that helped us in creating an amazing solution.
The first action of this project involved understanding the opportunity from a business point of view and identifying the correct problem to solve for our users. This process involved thinking about dealers' and sellers' needs and objectives. Based on our research findings, we identified a core set of features and functionalities necessary to include in our minimum viable product (MVP). These key features would be beneficial in helping us be distinguishable enough from our competition and also ensure we were tackling the needs of our future users.
Access to seller information
One distinguishing factor from our competitors in the space was that we already had a foundation of information about these vehicles that would be filtered through the app. This was a huge benefit because it meant drivers could not only have a great deal of context but also could verify information that was reportedSmoother questioning
A lot of what was done during the research phase was looking at how we could also stop duplicate questions + also unnecessary questions that had become standard but didn't add much value to the experience. adjusting all of this meant we could offer a more efficient set of questions that still presented as valuable of an output as our competition
Testing the alpha
We moved into development after testing a high-fidelity prototype internally and on calls with stakeholders. The app was first built for iOS, utilising the existing Motorway design system and iOS native components. We spent six months building what we called the "Alpha." This product version allowed us to take it into the field and test it with real drivers. The importance of this was twofold: we could gather feedback from drivers and observe how they interacted with the app. This part of the project proved to be incredibly insightful, teaching us a lot more about our product.
Key objectives
Understand how drivers will use the new app
Identify usability issues or errors
Identify opportunities for improvement
High-Level Hypotheses
Drivers can conduct an inspection from start to finish without major issuesDrivers find the app easy to use and are able to navigate through it seamlesslyDrivers understand and value the approach of confirming seller-declared informationDrivers find the driver app checks comprehensive enough.
How did we do ?
All 4 hypothesis were either partial or true, which was very positive for the team and meant our direction wasn’t going to shift too much in order to release a ‘Beta’. Based on this testing we generated 24 recommendations for our next steps, ranging from high priority to low.
Nothing is quite "final", is it?
Late January, we went live with the mobile app for iOS users and staggered the launch for our key transport providers, we came across a few initial challenges but these were easily overcome. Since then we have continued to make improvements to the application launching with key features.
One of those more recent key features was a demo jobs which was based on the need for drivers, internal staff and more to get a hands on experience of using the app without needing to have a job assigned to them.
Key features
Results & Metrics
Through continuous testing and adaptation of our designs since the release of the product we have been able to determine that the product is beneficial to users and has indeed made the process much more efficient.
50%
increase in inspection efficiency
90%
adoption rate due to streamlined workflow
19,000+
Since the January launch app
The journey for this app doesn't end here and the team continues to iterate and tackle user challenges that arise. Post-launch the team tackles tech debt and further efficiencies where necessary. A thorougly enjoyed exprience that allowed me to tackle an area not ventured into by the business