Native APP, Travel
GreenRide
Deloitte's carpooling app project aims to promote networking, cost savings, and carbon footprint reduction.
Deloitte’s financial services industry specialists provide comprehensive, integrated digital experiences and solutions to the banking & securities, insurance, and investment management sectors. Currently, it has approximately 455,000 people in more than 150 countries and territories.
Role
Timeline
November 2023 – December 2023
Team
Deliverables
Tools
Problem 😓
Goal 🏆
Goal 🏆
Deloitte's employees, who use their cars to commute to the workplace, need to find a way to facilitate carpooling with colleagues who share similar itineraries because they wish to reduce their carbon footprint, save money and create connections with fellow co-workers.
User Research 🔎
The first step into research was challenging assumptions on the subject of carpooling in Portugal. Trough secondary research we confirmed that it’s not a popular way of travelling/commuting, and latest official statistics from INE (National Institute of Statistics) show that, although it has been slightly increasing, it still only represents 2.5% of all daily commutes (2019 data). What this means for the app market is that there are few to none that work in the country, and the ones that do work, seem to have very low user adoption. We could get only one to work as intended but, in all tests, it never showed an available ride, even for very common routes like gong into or from the city centre.
Surveys & Interviews
In order to get a better understanding and deeper insights into the stakeholder wants & needs for this challenge, a Q&A workshop was held to discuss business goals, design preferences and general guidelines for the project. Before the end of the workshop, our initial research findings were shared and collaboratively validated the final version of the problem statement.
Twenty-six Deloitte employees answered the survey, and it was without surprise, that almost all said they never used a carpool app before, even though most use their own cars and struggle with long commute times and expenses. The cost of commute seams reasonably low on average, but if you take into account that they only go to the office one or two times a week, if this were to change, the value would be much higher, hence the preoccupation in reducing commute expenses.
Use own car to go to work
Spend less than 50€ on commute expenses
Never used carpooling app
Would like to reduce commute expenses
Struggle with long commute time and expenses
Likely to very likely to use carpooling company app
Five interview sessions took a step deep to understand some survey numbers and to give a more clear path on what design decisions should be taken as to address their goals & frustrations regarding the carpooling app.
“If we have to go all week, the team feels that we spend a lot more money in transport and everything.”
“I would feel safer to know something about the person and that it’s not a complete stranger.”
User Interview Insights
Building empathy
All previously gathered insights analysed and interviews sorted through an affinity diagram, resulted in the creation of two personas based on Deloitte employees, Sofia (UX/UI Designer, 27) our primary, and Ricardo (Manager, 37) the secondary. Given the scope and timeframe of the challenge, the focus was only on the development of Sofia, but the characteristics of Ricardo’s persona were taken into account in future design decisions.
- User Journey
Sofia, new to Deloitte, is keen to meeting new people within the organization, but because of the distance to the office and high commuting costs, Sofia mostly works from home and goes to the office only once a week. She begins occasionally carpooling with a teammate who lives nearby, making the commute more cost-effective. Finding it favourable, she begins exploring services that might cater to her needs, only to discover limited options available and raising personal safety concerns. A few weeks in, she learns about Deloitte’s carpooling app tailored for employees and decides to give it a try.
How might we incentivize and motivate employees to use the carpooling app, not only to save time and commute expenses, but also to enhance their environmental consciousness and actively reduce their CO2 footprint?
Defining the MVP of the product
With problem statement, persona and user journey defined, it was time to write down the characteristics of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), before proceeding to the ideate stage. With the help of MoSCoW map, features gathered from earlier research stages were distributed and a final MVP Statement was written down to guide further development.
MVP Statement 👌
The Goal of Deloitte’s carpooling application, at the bare minimum, is to give employees a simple way to connect to others co-workers who share similar commuting itineraries. By knowing what is available, this app further aims to encourage employees to come more often to the office, all while helping them save time and commute expenses and also encourage them to be more environmentally conscious.
MVP Statement 👌
The goal of the WiseBites app, at the bare minimum, is to help health-conscious individuals to focus on how to cook healthy quick recipes and have clear and practical nutritional details that support their dietary goals. By knowing what is available, the app further aims to encourage users to lead a healthier lifestyle by being able to connect to a qualified nutritionist for more personalised goals.
From idea to prototype 💡
To quickly do concept testing and have initial usability insights, a digital low fidelity prototype was put together, originating from quick paper sketches, to get the general feel of how the app would work and look like. All four testers found the app minimalistic and clear on its features and intended purpose, with only a few issues to address at this time.
Low fidelity sketches
Mid Fidelity Prototype
In order to save time for the last part of the project when building the high-fidelity screens and to get as much feedback on the design choices as early as possible, a decision was made to build a detailed mid-fidelity prototype that would closely resemble the final product. Everything was already laid out as it would be on the high-fidelity screens, spaced using an 8pt soft grid, and also most of the screen elements were created as components so that they could be reused to create the apps design system.
Usability Testing
Positive feedback carried over from low fidelity testing, with all three users suggesting minor to no changes on the usability test, that mostly focused on written content and features that were outside the scope of the challenge & happy path.
Visual Design 🍪
For this project, Deloitte had previously provided their brand guidelines, so it was required to follow brand colours and typefaces to build the prototypes. During one of our weekly touchpoint meetings, different app visuals were analysed to get dos and don’ts on the overall look and feel, with preferences falling into a mostly flat look, with plenty of white space and functional components without the need of much ornamentation, all with the purpose of aligning the prototype to their current brand identity. As part of the design challenge, the trademark Deloitte green dot also had to be incorporated into the visuals, which in the final prototype you can find on the app logo and as a punctuation mark in the user’s profile. In terms of accessibility, the design should strive to comply with WCAG 2 Level AA, but in the majority of the components, Level AAA was reached.
Further ‘good to have’, but not mandatory, was the adaptation of one or two screens to ‘dark mode’ and the creation of a simple design system.
Creating the Design system
Despite not being part of mandatory deliverables, the team at Deloitte challenged us to build a simple design system for the app, and even tough there was no project time to go too deep, because as part of my regular workflow the building of reusable components is already a given, it was just a matter of labelling and organizing everything in a way anyone new coming into the file can quickly pick up from where we left it.
Dark Mode
As the project timeline was coming to an end, there wasn’t much time left to dedicate to the design of the dark mode. In spite of not being mandatory but being something that had not been done in previous projects, a first iteration was still made, mostly as design practice and final deliverable.
High Fidelity Prototype
You can interact with the prototype clicking in the image on the right or use this link to open in a new tab.
- User Journey 'Happy Path'
Sofia uses the app for the first time, going through onboarding screens and logs in with her Deloitte email. Her profile is displayed with company information pre-filled.
At the home screen, she receives a message notification. After checking, she sees that it’s from the in-app AI assistance.
Back at the home screen, Sofia schedules her commute in order to start sharing rides. She inputs required data and confirms everything on the review screen.
A few moments later she receives a ride request and goes into messages to review it, checks the requester profile and after a brief chat, accepts it.
You can interact with the prototype clicking in the image below or use this link to open in a new tab.
Client Feedback 👋
I am Joana Carvalho, a Product Designer at Deloitte Digital Portugal.
I had the pleasure of proposing the challenge and guiding Filipe Branco through his final project to wrap up the UX/UI Design Bootcamp at Ironhack. The task involved creating a user-friendly MVP for an internal carpooling app at Deloitte. I’m truly impressed by his commitment to user-centric design and innovative thinking. Filipe’s thorough research not only met but exceeded our expectations, resulting in a solution that precisely aligns with Deloitte’s standards. His ability to translate complex ideas into visually appealing and intuitive interfaces showcases a level of expertise beyond his recent graduation.
During the presentation of the final MVP, Filipe’s communication skills demonstrated his readiness for effective collaboration in a professional setting. I am confident that Filipe is well-prepared for his first professional experience in the UX/UI field. I highly recommend Filipe, as he possesses the skills and enthusiasm needed to make significant contributions to any team or project. Should you require further information, please feel free to reach out.
Source: Email from Joana Carvalho, Product Designer
I’m really pleased (though not surprised) to hear that your project was selected as the best. Fantastic presentation and outstanding work, covering not just the research and UX aspects, but also excelling in UI and creativity. (…) I didn’t want to miss the chance to express my gratitude to both of you for putting your hearts into this. I am genuinely proud of your achievements.
Source: Email from José Graça da Silva, Lead Product Designer
Learnings & Shout-outs 👏
This project ended with a golden ribbon, my journey in the Ironhack bootcamp. Already into December and feeling emotionally tired from balancing personal life, daily job, client work and bootcamp workshops, it still managed to become the top project and be selected to represent the class in the upcoming Remote Hackshow (yet to be scheduled), happening in 2024.
It was a great project to improve my communication skills, since it was a challenge given by a real client, and we had weekly touchpoints with them that required the interpretation and sharing of design ideas that had to be clear for both parties. The only shortcoming on this project was that we didn’t have time to properly do user testing on the high-fidelity prototype, but since it was very close to the mid, expectation of test results was around the same level.
From a technical aspect, this workshop let me experiment in a real project the usage of variables inside Figma prototypes, and required more in-depth testing to comply with accessibility standards. Also, it allowed me to try my hands into ‘dark mode’ design, which I don’t get to do very often.
A profound word of appreciation for my teammate on this project, Katayoun Sirbu, whose methodical organization, sensibility, calm and positive spirit kept everything rolling smoothly, even when I got sick for a few days and couldn’t be of much help. Kata is a critical thinker and always kept me grounded when sometimes I went overboard and tried to make things more complex than they needed to be, not to mention, one or two rabbits she pulled out of her designer’s hat that shifted, for the better, the direction we were heading. We were always in sync with each other’s ideas, and I hope, sometime in the future, we can do other projects together.
As a closing note, I would like to thank the Deloitte team, José Graça and Joana Carvalho, for their support during the project, always giving expert insights and advice and to all the other really nice people that we met at Deloitte that participated in our interviews and survey. Your help was invaluable for us to reach the final outcome.
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