UX Design. Shuttl. 2018.
Designing SIGNAL
for Shuttl
Redesigning an operational tool to make monitoring daily bus operations more efficient and become a real-time solution to operational trip problems. A tool that would scale with Shuttl's hyper-growth,
Operational tool
March 2019-July 2019
My Role
I lead the product design and research from end to end. The UI was designed by the UI designer after I left Shuttl
Team- 1 PM, 1 UI designer
Stakeholders: Head of Products Head of Design, Manager of Team Leads
Shuttl offers long-distance intra-city bus rides targeting office-to-home commuters whose work trips are classified as “very long trips”, that are longer than 30 km. Shuttl’s key offering to customers is a scheduled service for work trips with a fixed seat in an air-conditioned bus at a reasonable price.
The end customers could book a seat for the following days using Shuttl's app.
THE TOOL
Service Panel is the operational tool for Shuttl to ensure that its daily bus operations for consumers and B2C run successfully as scheduled and planned with the convenience that is promised to consumers. This tool amplifies the operator's ability to improve serviceability and on-time arrivals. Our objective was to design a new panel that helps users to achieve their goals efficiently and keep up with the growing business.
USERS
Users of this panel, were internal team members Dashboard Managers (DMs), who make sure that every bus that is assigned a trip is serviceable and on time and has a replacement if needed. They manage delays, arrivals, resolve trip disputes directly with the drivers and vendors. The tool they handle is the bridge between real-time on-ground activities and in-app end-consumer communication
THE CHALLENGE
As the business grew and requests came from the internal users and stakeholders, the service panel was designed by accretion, resulting in short-termism on the backend. Eventually, the tool became an ineffective technical debt making users unable to work to its full potential.
The initial problem identified can largely be themed under Information and Usability issues:
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"Out of line Communication", "Information Scatter" and "Unidirectional Information"
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Data retrieval was hard
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Fundamental usability was a challenge.
RESEARCH METHOD
Without a researcher available, I took on the role of the researcher and conducted a 2-week in-depth research and insight gathering session using the “Day in the life” method to understand what it is to be a DM and how does the tool helps them to succeed. I also conducted a moderated interview session with each user. There were 8 participants from two shifts.
For analysis, I used a spectrum map to understand pain points related to the interface and working behavior
The research study unveils Insights, problems, needs, expectations, and learning in-depth.
BEHAVIOURS
The DMs constantly communicated within themselves for reassurance before taking any action this was mainly because the panel doesn't act as an efficient output tool. Information on the service panel was scattered, hard to find and often users kept an external track of all the required information.
The DMs and the drivers share a strong rapport. Calling is a major part of their “workload”, every two minutes. These calls are majorly related to non-trip communication like telling drivers about the actions they ought to take on their app, requests for marking a vehicle non-ops for various reasons, vendors who call them to update vehicle and driver details versa. But the driver
The service panel did not help the DMs to review, access actions taken on buffer vehicle, non-ops vehicles. Thus, every DM maintained a book where they log changes to service. This served as a verification, reference and rectification method for future and current tasks.
There is a dependency on knowledge transfer between Customer Care and DMs that affects the end-user. The way the system handled alerts, the customer care does not have a full overview of real-time bus statuses whereas DMs overlook active tracking of a bus and focus on solving major vehicles and driver-related issues. This affects the end consumer’s on-call experience as Customer Care relies on DMs to seek real-time bus status.
INSIGHTS
The Service Panel is not the (only) source of truth.
Ideally, the information provided by DM should be feed to the system and it should be seen by other teammates. Otherwise, it makes the process slower and affects the end-user on trip experience. Users are unable to retrieve information via service panel, driver details, are in some other tool, external documentations have past data that are recorded in the service panel at the end of the day. It doesn’t help the user with information that is either analytical or historical in nature.
DMs are more reactive than proactive in their processces
Communication between the system and customer service is an added responsibility. This takes up so much time and effort from the DMs that they are forced to be the communication bridge within the field and the customer care. This leaves them with less time to look for future trips and handle trips are currently affected.
DMs are sensitive about a bus/driver than the end customers
Since the Service panel only talks about the operation and what it impacts, DMs are more inclined to solve a problem operationally, without understanding that their actions impact a group of customers at the same time.
On-trip alert notification in the system was a set of chronological updates to a bus's status.
Alerts formed the most atomic important information archy-type that the users cared about.
We tied the most atomic element of the interface to a simplified three-page tool-
Alert Information, Inventory, and Dashboard.
Providing
Emphasis
Clearly show what is going on and where to focus
Facilitate
Processing
Direct on what actions to take and when to take
Create
Unity
Access to information whenever required in one tool
Solution
Due to the confidentiality of the project, final screens cannot be shared online. Please reach out to me to know the full design story and impact of this redesign.
Shuttl offers long-distance intra-city bus rides targeting office-to-home commuters whose work trips are classified as “very long trips”, that is longer than 30 km. Shuttl’s key offering to customers is a scheduled service for work trips with the convenience of a fixed seat in an air-conditioned bus at a reasonable price.
Service Panel is the operational tool for Shuttl to ensure that its daily bus operations for consumers and B2C run successfully as scheduled and planned with the convenience that is promised to consumers. This tool amplifies the operator's ability to improve serviceability and on-time arrivals. Our objective was to design a new panel that helps users to achieve their goals efficiently and keep up with the growing business.