Truck Driver Power

Improving truck drivers’ quality of life by connecting them with other drivers on the road.

Client: Truck Driver Power
Date: July 14, 2017
Services: Research, Sketching, Wireframing, Prototyping
Platorm: Mobile App
Design Tools: Sketch, Invision

Challenge

Optimize the on-boarding process and improve user discovery of features in the app.

Trucking companies experience annual driver turnover rates ranging from 70% to 110%, creating a $4B annual recruitment & a $4B annual retention annual spend. Autonomous trucking is in the horizon, putting truck drivers under threat of losing their jobs. How can we humanize the truck driving experience, improve their career, and offer social connectedness?

Process

Secondary research helped me learn about the trucking industry before conducting user interviews.

I familiarized my self with the industry by viewing competitor apps, sites, and truck driver association sites to gain background information as well as any trends and patterns.

Research

  • Current User Interviews – I interviewed 3 current users to learn about their experience as a truck driver and how they used the app.
  • Usability Testing – I also conducted usability testing on the existing app to identify any usability problems, collect qualitative and quantitative data.
  • Truck Driver Interviews – My partner went to a truck stop and interviewed 3 truck drivers to gain an understanding of their motivations, goals, and frustrations with their career.

Research Findings

  1. Lack of value with the app overall because the purpose is not clear
  2. Poor social engagement causes users to lose interest
  3. Confusion regarding how to play territories game

User Quotes

“I can’t tell what this app does. It seems like a spin on Pokemon go, but then it’s also a traveling tool? I don’t know.”

“I want to know what else I can do in this app. Is this a game?``

“As a truck driver, I want to see where to find restaurants in an obvious way. It’s not clear to me where I could go for that.”

Personas

Based on our research findings, we created a primary and secondary persona to help guide our design decisions. The primary persona is the less experienced driver who is focused on advancing his career. The secondary persona is more tenured and wants to maximize his earning potential on the job.

primaryPersona
secondaryPersona

User Flows

We created user flows to help me understand how the user moves through the onboarding process. This allowed us to see the inefficiency of the current onboarding process to help design a new process.

Site Map

We created site map to illustrate the hierarchy of content across the app.

Design Exploration

We sketched ideas around the onboarding experience and home screen. It was important for us to communicate the purpose of the app right away through optional information cards.

Our user interviews and usability tests showed confusion about why users would use the app, so explaining the key features before registering was important.

There were also a few issues regarding privacy during the current onboarding, so we eliminated the phone number requirement for registration and replaced with email and password fields.

Wireframes

We consolidated a few of our best ideas as we moved into low fidelity wireframes. We chose to eliminate the game from the app completely based on our user research.

Instead, we focused on a map that highlighted relevant stops for truck drivers. The filterable map aims to improve their truck driving experience by providing key information such as amenities and reviews for specific locations. We also incorporated a social aspect by incorporating a chat feature that is specific to each place.

We learned that truck driving is a very isolated job that doesn’t involve a lot of social interaction. Many drivers are part of slack communities where they socialize with others with similar interests. Allowing drivers to discover other nearby drivers and communicate with them was a key feature to humanize the truck driving experience and offer social engagement.

Design Refinement

We conducted usability tests on the prototype and discovered a couple issues. In the first design, we used a rain icon as a toggle to turn the radar on and off. Users confused tapping the weather icon in the tab bar instead. I changed this symbol to a radar icon so that the function was more clear. 

My initial prototype did not have enough functionality for people to accurately complete tasks. Specifically the filter bar at the top did not work on all screens. I updated the prototype with improved functionality which resulted in successful completion of tasks.

Prototype

I created a prototype using Invision which you can see the final product below.

Try Prototype

High Fidelity Mockup

EXAMPLE OF MY VISUAL DESIGN TREATMENT

Result

Clients did not move forward with the redesign.

We presented the redesign to the client and they questioned why we chose to remove the game component completely. I shared a usability test video with users vocalizing their frustrations and confusion with the game to support my design decisions. I also shared specific stories from my interviews to further illustrate the lack of time to play games. We also recommended the client stop development to save money, and spend time on the user experience instead. While they recognized their development process is fast and engineering driven, clients chose not to proceed with our recommendations.

Next step: Test with the redesign with truck drivers, discover areas of improvement, and refine.

Key Learnings

Understanding how to communicate the ROI of user experience is extremely important. For stakeholders who have more of a business or technical background, I needed to explain my design recommendations in a way that would be most impactful to my audience.

Breaking down the cost of development changes in terms of dollars and cents helped put into perspective the money that is spent development vs crafting a more delightful experience.

Ex: If you make 5 changes a day over 20 days and spend $100/hour on a developer = $10,000. $10,000/month is spent just on development changes. Instead, that money should be used to improve the user experience and validate ideas early on.