Team
Design Manager, Product Designer
My Role
Product Designer
Platform
Android Mobile
Employer
Delhivery
Duration
Sep 2021 - Nov 2021
Project Status
Failed Project
About Delhivery
Delhivery is one of the major end to end logisitics service partners in India.
PROJECT BRIEF
Working with Delhivery to design the experience of Delivery Executives who go door to door delivering packages. The product had to be designed for Sri Lankan and Bangladesh market
KICK OFF
At the outset of the project we did not have clear mission. We were told that Delhivery wants to enter Sri Lanka and Bangaldesh logistics market through their SaaS offering for the Last mile operations.
So I partnered with Design Manager to do some Primary and Secondary Research. The idea of the research was to understand existing products in the international market and current problems of Delivery Executives
THE PROBLEM
In the Sri Lankan and Bangladesh market logistics services (last mile delivery) is unorganised.
No solution exists which solves for the end to end logistics.
The products like Bringg, Locus and Onfleet are expensive and not designed for Indian Sub-Continent.
CHALLENGE
How Might We design a last mile delivery app for the Indian Sub-Continent Market, keeping Sri Lankan and Bangladesh market in mind?
SECODARY RESEARCH
A simple Google Search told us there are many last mile delivery players in the market. However we wanted to explore players from different demographics. So looked at APAC, USA. These were the 4 products we shortlisted to study in great detail.
Onfleet
Fareye
Bringg
Locus
We saw their YouTube vidoes, read documentation, saw demos.
In addition to doing Secondary Research we also wanted to look at the current operations of Delhivery Last Mile Services in India.
GROUND RESEARCH
To understand better how Dispatch Center works and Delivery Executive go about delivering packages, we went to a Dispatch Center and delivered packages with the Delivery Executive. We had to visit the dispatch center multiple times throughout the project to understand things in detail
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Interdependency: Package goes through First and Mid mile before reaching Last Mile. So Last Mile cannot exist independently of the the other two.
Proof of Delivery: Often Delivery Executives do not take Proof of Delivery from the users in a proper way. For example, we found that Delivery Executives often sign the packages on their own instead of asking users to sign it.
High Pace Tasks: The operations on ground requires users to work at a very high pace, often the task should be completed in the minimum possible steps for speed and accuracy. Tasks can go as high as 120-130 per day. Here tasks are the deliveries to be done.
Navigating to Locations: Often Delivery Executives know task locations by heart. They even know how long it will take to deliver a package in a certain locality or society, however they struggle with number of packages to be delivered in a locality, they don’t know how many packages are to be delivered in the same building.
Outcomes
Prepaid Drop
The flow had to be simple and efficient. Executive delivers the parcel to the customer where payment was done before hand.
Reschedule Delivery
Reschedule delivery was another very frequent performed operation. Performed on the request of customer.
Cash on Delivery as Mode of Payment
Around 67% of Delhivery’s total orders ordered were Cash on Delivery at the time across India
Cancel Delivery
It was not uncommon for deliveries to not get completed, this can be as high as 29% sometimes within a day. On average around 7% of the deliveries were not completed across India at the time.
WHAT USERS HAD TO SAY
Manoj, Delivery Executive (Age: 23)
"I really like how I can use this app with just one hand even on my big screen phone”
Nagarjuna, Dispatch Manager (Age: 31)
"The flow of the App is quite straight forward and simple to understand”
Naveen, Delivery Executive (Age: 22)
"Clicking on the buttons is easy, I don’t have to put lot of efforts in pressing the right button, it is very smooth"
Sriharsha, Delivery Executive (21)
"“The app is easy enough to understand, it would be great if we can design this in the regional languages too. My friends looking for a job can benefit a lot”"
❌The Big Failure ❌
While we were able to complete the design handover of the project in 7 weeks, the development on the project was in progress when Sri Lankan economic crises happened. This was back in 2021. The whole project was called off and never saw the day of light.
Learnings
Operations are often about efficiency and quick pace, so when designing keeping the user’s context, scale of operations, prime goal in mind is paramount
There will be certain situations which will be out of our hands as designers and we need to let go in such situations instead of getting too attached to our work