When reception was poor for a newly-launched consumer-facing app in Indonesia, my team was assigned to re-design the experience for customers to request for a courier to their doorstep. Collaborating with operation teams to re-design the experience based on user-derived insights, we managed to both reduce task time on the app significantly and introduce operational procedure changes that improved other capabilities.
Service design
Interaction design
UI design
1 product manager
2 front-end SWE
& more
8 weeks (over 6 months)
2017
Android
iOS
Web
The company, whose core customers are larger-volume e-commerce businesses, launched a consumer-facing courier service to reach a new market. This Ninja Easy app, available on Android and iOS along with a web version, enables Indonesians residing in the capital city (Jakarta) to request for a courier to their doorstep to pick up their parcels for next-day delivery.
The development process of this app was turbulent: many features were cut during development due to various issues until it was pared down to a courier-on-request service. The feature set of the application includes:
This public app was available to users in Jakarta, Indonesia that need next-day non-international delivery services without traveling to a post office. Small business owners were an important group because of the frequent, low-volume delivery services they need.
In the first few months post-launch, the traffic to the app was poor with a higher-than-expected drop-off rate. We noticed from usage analytics that the drop-off occurs more frequently at:
We also noticed longer-than-expected session durations (>5 minutes) during the pickup location setting phase of the app.
User research (via proxies)
Contextual research
User flow analysis
Wireframing
Co-design with stakeholders
Hi-fidelity mockups
Track analytics
The product manager (who speaks Indonesian) conducted research with the Indonesian team in Jakarta city, meeting small business owners to learn how they use social commerce.
The Indonesian team also held a focus group with home business owners to understand their expectations and thoughts on the current Ninja Easy app.
Due to the mapping API having inadequate coverage of Indonesian places along with the design of the location setting process, some participants were shown incorrect locations on a map after entering their addresses, leading to frustration with trying to set the correct location.
Knowing the cost of delivery is a priority for the users. Participants felt that the app experience (at the point of time) took too much time for them to obtain the prices they were looking for. Some noted that they will skip using the service because of this problem.
Participants noted that entering the parcel details could be very time-consuming for larger quantities of parcels. Some noted that they will skip using the service if they have to go through this repetitive process for a larger order.
Before simply resolving the user problems, we also discussed with the operations teams to understand how and what they could do.
Pricing was calculated with parcel size, district and city information only. Other information was not necessary for that task.
Operators had to verify and correct address details in Indonesia with their local knowledge to give the correct directions to couriers.
Staff hired to man parcel transit points could handle digitising information of the expected small quantity of parcels from this service.
To deliver on the promise that this app provides a more convenient courier service, the goal is to improve app experience so that users spend less time going through the steps, or figuring out how, to request for a courier to be at their doorstep.
Some of the major challenges included data reliability issues with the map API, which scrapped a few concepts that required it. We worked with software engineers and operation team members to check the feasibility of concepts and to ensure that edge cases were covered.
Internal applications were also updated to support the operational changes that resulted from this consumer app, so that staff can add, edit, or remove orders at appropriate points of the chain.
With fewer steps and inputs required, minutes are shaved off the time taken to receive prices. Customers may input full parcel details if they wish to.
Designed to follow customer habits, pick up location details are requested just when the customer is ready for it. Past address inputs are also saved to eliminate repetitive tasks.
Pickup location setting becomes more relevant to the moment: Customers only enter their address information when they are ready
