Competitor Analysis

In order to design a prototype that was substantial and resolute, we surveyed the current landscape and measured what other competitors were practicing within their mobile tracking apps. In doing so, we created an understanding of which design methods were effective, useful, pleasing, and intuitive.

Fundamental Insights

Following the investigation into industry competition, the necessity arose to consult solid practical expertise in order to evaluate our previous findings. We sought to understand functional principles behind highly successful methods for mobile design, specifically in how to best design mobile forms. We further sought to uncover which elements create pleasing and useful mobile order tracking interactions.

User Personality

Guided by an awareness and collection of stories communicated to us by our sponsors, we built an understanding of the different types of people currently using the web tools for United Cargo. To reflect one of these users' experiences and sensibilities, we crafted a persona. This profile centered our designs and unified the UX, helping us to always connect back to a person on the other end.

Previous Website

One of our sponsors walked us through United Cargo's existing web application via video screen share and detailed the processes for booking a shipment, tracking, looking up flight schedules and addresses for shipping locations within the customer account view. Throughout our design review walkthrough, we noted different elements and checkpoints that contributed to each process's experiential journey. We realized that each of these United Cargo website processes and flows needed to be transformed and manipulated through a series of design iterations in order to reach a digital prototype stage. This design review helped to concentrate on what core functions needed to be developed and what extra deadweight could be let go of to provide a concise experience. There were a large number of screens in the web tools, giving us a lot of material to shift into the mobile app design. We tracked these process flows in different white-boarding sessions to help establish our mental model for each of the four major functions.

Sketching Vision

This app clearly needed four main functions: booking, tracking, schedules, and addresses. It was time to creatively diverge. Each member of the team individually created initial paper sketches of an envisioned prototype to help visualize each step in these processes.

Findings from competitive analysis and secondary research ground a concise user experience that guides users toward clear management of booking and tracking cargo pieces. Customizability and control offer intuitive interaction with this prototype. Relevant fields and error messages appear prominently.

Core Wireframes

These screen prototypes reflect the necessary four core functions for this app. Ideas derived from group discussion, sketching, design element targets, and findings of our research all laid the foundational inspiration for these early app visions. With this first pass of mockups, comfortable use and easily apparent affordances for the completion of fields guided much of the look and feel. Keeping the UI straightforward, simple, and clean upheld design aims to keep the overall experience concise, intuitive, and just the right amount of efficient.

Interface Assessment

Through this process we sought to identify design concerns whose eventual treatment would improve users' efficiency of use, productivity, and higher end levels of satisfaction. Executing a series of usability tests with representative users and exercising the application prototype under controlled test conditions helped to achieve just those goals. Specifically, our test objectives included the determination of design inconsistencies and usability problem areas surrounding the interface and content areas. Some of these potential sources of error included: navigation errors, presentation errors, and control usage problems.

We utilized test result data to assess whether usability goals defining a rewarding user experience had been met. Defining user satisfaction further helped to evaluate the prototype in future testing situations. Moving forward with specific, feature-based insights around each major section of our des. The items that we needed to champion were clear, priming us to craft high-fidelity prototypes.

High-Fidelity

At long last, we were ready to present our production: a polished, high-fidelity prototype. These are our high-fidelity mockups for our vision of what United Cargo can utilize as a mobile app. At the end of the semester, we proposed these screens to our class, professors, and our sponsors from United Airlines, who went on to incorporate these assets in their own work down the line.

Retrospective

This project showed just how complicated the process of shipping a package truly is. There are so many details, steps, and potential complications along the way. Translating all of that to an app was truly an insightful experience around the complexity of designing a commercial product. Regarding mobile app design, this was my first, big venture into the practice. I was introduced to Figma and deepened my technical knowledge of the platform. I also learned how complex the process of designing an app is, through multiple stages of fidelity, and with different iterations. Little details can have huge impacts along the way.