Salut! Je m'appelle
Discovery
Un système de renseignement GPS en direct qui surveille les opérations logistiques. Il relie plusieurs fournisseurs de données en une seule carte afin que les utilisateurs puissent voir leur entreprise à l'échelle du pays en un seul endroit.
L'équipe
Chef de Projet
Chef de Conception Produit
Chef de Projet pour les Intégrations
Développeur d'Interface Utilisateur
Architecte de Solution
Consultant Technique
Outils
Microsoft Teams
Gestion et coordination de projets.
Apple Keynote
Wireframes et maquettes haute définition.
Affinity Designer
Actifs de l'UI
Google Forms
Commentaires des clients et sondages.
Résumé du Programme
Le coût est le talon d'Achille d'une industrie avec des marges traditionnellement faibles et des attentes de service extrêmement élevées. Toute entreprise qui peut réduire le temps perdu ou augmenter sa production globale peut obtenir un avantage immédiat sur ses pairs. Il fallait un système qui permette aux logisticiens d'affiner chaque trajet à la minute près et de maintenir ainsi ses véhicules en marche le plus de temps possible.
Chronologie
Le développement du produit de base a duré huit mois, de juillet 2019 à février 2020.
Jui
Août
Sep
Oct
Nov
Déc
Jan
Fév
Research
Design
Development
Mon Rôle
J'ai dirigé la conception et le développement du concept de ce nouveau produit et j'ai travaillé aux côtés de quatre collègues et d'un consultant externe pour le lancer sur le marché. Mes missions spécifiques comprenaient :
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Coordonner les entretiens et autres activités de recherche
Définition de l'ensemble des fonctionnalités et de l'architecture de l'information
Concevoir son UI et superviser sa conversion en HTML
Permettre aux chefs de projet de superviser le développement
Objectifs de l'Entreprise
Développer des segments inexploités sur le marché de la logistique.
S'intègre facilement à n'importe quel système tiers, pour prendre pied auprès de clients extérieurs à notre écosystème .
Consolider notre image de marque en tant que fournisseur de technologies innovantes.
Recherche
Au fur et à mesure que les appareils GPS devenaient courants, les clients nous ont répété à plusieurs reprises qu'ils ne les aidaient pas à améliorer leurs opérations. Nous avons cherché à savoir si ces données pouvaient être mieux utilisées.
Le positionnement du produit nécessaire, afin de le justifier sur le marché.
Analyse de Marché
Pour bien comprendre ce qu'un tel produit devrait faire, nous avons voulu voir ce que d'autres entreprises ont essayé. Nous avons commencé à la source, en recherchant ce que les fournisseurs de services GPS proposent dans le cadre de leurs systèmes complémentaires. Ils étaient, en fait, nos concurrents indirects.
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Lorsque nous avons recherché nos concurrents directs, nous n'avons pas pu trouver de correspondance exacte. Nous avons trouvé quelques agrégateurs, qui aident à définir une référence minimale de fonctionnalités, mais il est vite devenu clair que nous devions explorer notre propre chemin.
Formuler une Hypothèse
Avant de nous lancer dans l'interaction avec les clients, nous avons interrogé des experts internes en la matière, qui ont intégré la technologie GPS dans nos produits. Ils nous ont aidés à comprendre quelles données sont disponibles et à quoi nos clients les utilisent.
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Nous avons appris que le simple fait de connaître les lieux en direct ne les aidait pas beaucoup ; le fait que vous soyez en retard ne vous dit pas (1) pourquoi, ni (2) quoi faire à ce sujet. Cela, pour quelques-uns, a fait du GPS plus un outil CRM qu'une source d'informations.
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Notre idée de produit initiale est donc devenue la combinaison de données en direct avec des informations exploitables.
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Comprendre les Clients Potentiels
While I conducted interviews throughout the development lifecycle,
my initial research involved five rounds of qualitative interviews with three organizations, ranging in business size and type. I interviewed a range of potential users, at multiple levels of the corporate hierarchy.
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This gave the team an idea of the problems our customers were facing.
We're sitting in central command, [so] whatever processes we have are only as good as our ability to enforce them.
— Un chef d'entreprise légitimement frustré
A resounding feedback we gained from managers was, even if they were to know what went wrong, and why, they couldn't change anything until there was accountability.
This is when we realized their biggest need is control, and not just visibility.
Personnifier les Utilisateurs
THE FOCUSSED
Ravi
He lives his life one day at a time. He is smart and hardworking, but is only concerned with his own job. Change is usually handed to him.
Product Buy-in
Needs
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Clarity on expected output
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Stability in job and daily work
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Ease in tracking pending tasks
Motivations
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Running a smooth ship
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Having universally good relations
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A stable annual increment
THE PROCESS GUY
Cyrus
He is a result-oriented person, and is mindful of his career choices. He is fine with changes as long as his work is not complicated.
Product Buy-in
Needs
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Full authority to execute his job
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Making his work life easy
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Dependable workers & vendors
Motivations
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Increasing his team's output
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Rising up the corporate ladder
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Networking opportunities
THE GO-GETTER
Vikram
He loves new ideas, anything that improves his business. He is very detailed oriented, often wondering why things can't be done better.
Product Buy-in
Needs
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Business clarity through data
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Visible change in limited time
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Team support and accountability
Motivations
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Increasing operational profits
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Maintaining business reputation
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Making a mark in the company
Getting to the Heart of the Problem
A journey map I developed in collaboration with the sales team, following the thoughts of the "product evangelist."
Predicting the Adoption Journey
During the interview phase, I identified our product's adoption is not going to be as easy as we thought. We might convince the manager writing the cheque, but they too would have doubts about its success. This is because this wouldn't be their first crack at bringing accountability to their company — employees just hate being monitored. For example, drivers unplugging their GPS devices en route is considered unsurprising. Discovery needed to overcome this problem.
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So, we started by listing the biggest hurdles to adoption, which also informed our messaging:
Acceptance by Employees
Deployment of Hardware
Integration with Customer ERP
Support by GPS Vendors
Mapping User Emotions
The biggest hurdle was related to trust in the system. To solve this I needed to understand what users really thought when dealing with business problems independent of such a system. This helped the team better pick features to focus on.
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In the example shown, I mapped the thoughts and concerns of a 'traffic agent', whose sole job is to monitor vehicle movement.
Quantifying how users think, so as to address it in design.
Defining the Product's Feature Set
Once we had a fair idea of what our customers expect from such a product, we set out to create our WBS. I took the lead here, by first defining feature areas and then working with the team to convert research insights into user stories. Below are three examples:
A representative sample of user stories developed during the planning phase.
Design
Half-way into our research process, we had enough data to start visualizing the product. That initial design then went through several revisions and tests until we were ready for commercial launch.
Transferring Ideas onto Paper
L'animation, par exemple, n'était pas la seule considération.
Some of the later-stage wireframes of Discovery.
Building an MVP
Despite a generally positive interest, we weren't sure how many customers would actually pay for such a product. So we prepared a mockup presentation, which our founder used to demonstrate as a new system "in the works." The initial response itself was enough for our Technical Lead, Shashank, put together a stock version for further live demonstrations. And it was worth it because we funnelled the input and reactions it received back into the product's development.
A screenshot of the MVP, functioning with live data.
L'animation, par exemple, n'était pas la seule considération.
Les contraintes
L'animation, par exemple, n'était pas la seule considération.
L'animation, par exemple, n'était pas la seule considération.
Les contraintes
L'animation, par exemple, n'était pas la seule considération.
Viewing one panel at a time
Viewing data from all panels
Viewing one panel at a time
Démo
Démo
Creating a Core Design Identity
L'animation, par exemple, n'était pas la seule considération.
L'animation, par exemple, n'était pas la seule considération.
These markers may look simple but they share a lot of details in one glance.
The colour of a ring changes based on the status of the vehicle.
If any vehicle is facing an issue, a light orange ring pulsates around it.
The contrasting arrows make it easy to identify whether the customers own the vehicle or not.
In the end, there was such a strong association of the entire product with the "little coloured arrows," as one of the beta-users put to us, that I later incorporated it into the retail logo of the final product.
Putting it all Together
I then made mockups of the product as a whole. I intentionally chose to keep things simple because the target audience couldn't care less for anything elaborate. On the contrary, our research with low-def mockups showed a strong correlation between trust and simplicity.
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I focused on the core experience of Discovery, i.e. elements users would interact the most:
Chercher
Alertes
Alertes
An animated preview of multi-layered search
A quick and easy way to search for multiple entities at once. Users can simple enter one or more (a maximum of three) query items and the system will directly filter the data on the screen. Any associated panel will open as well, which lets the user zoom into the item(s).
As a whole, this lent to the creation of a clean structure and navigation across the product:
Designing the User Interface
After months of research, ideation and wireframing, I was finally ready to create the first hi-fi look n' feel of this new product. I put together mockups and animated prototypes to test the system's flow for one final verification round, before the team proceeded to development.
A screenshot of the icon in design, using Affinity Designer.
A screenshot of the prototype in design, using Keynote.
Development
Once our designs passed rigorous internal testing, we finally moved on to the programming stage. We already had a base ready, thanks to our MVP experiment, so we expanded on its code, one iteration at a time, until we had a ready product.
An early live/HTML rendering of the system.
Building Discovery
Initially, we split the development into two projects to run in parallel. The first was the creation of the UI, led by Dhawal. The second project involved the development of backend processes and over 100 API integrations. That was led equally by Akshay and Siddharth, who worked with Harshad, our development head for Discovery, whose team continued working on the MVP's makeshift UI.
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Once we made enough progress, we merged the teams for further development.
Technology & Beta Testing
Discovery was built on a host of advanced technologies. We used Microsoft Azure's technology stack to manage the storage and analysis of data. In particular we used Streaming Analytics to parse millions of data points per day (per customer), and identify anomalies to generate alerts. For searching and filtering, which were integral to the system, we used Elastic Search.
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We approached the development of Discovery in three releases spanning two and a half months. Each of these releases was published to participating customers, who used it as part of our free beta program.
Product Launch
Once we were satisfied with the stability and feature set of Discovery, we immediately went ahead with a "soft release." This made it a billable product while we worked towards a traditional market launch.
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For the launch, I worked closely with the marketing and sales departments to define a consistent message. The research we conducted also contributed to the market segmentation. Discovery was targeted at not just our existing customers but also at both customers of our competitors (to cross-sell to) and with customers which we had no previous relationship with.
Outcome & Future
Discovery launched under unprecedented conditions in the market, which caused us to change our initial projections for sales and usage milestones.
That said, we did have some outcomes to brag about:
Two of our test participants became billed customers on day one of going live. One of the customers is the world's largest logistics company, that plans to expand Discovery into its other markets.
It is already the company's No. 1 product, in collective data processing; is on track to become No. 2 in revenue.
Discovery has customers in 2 countries and has given the company its highest record of prospect interest.
As on June 2020, I had moved on from the core team to other assignments, but the program has picked up pace. Discovery is already on its fourth major release, with big future plans.
A Note on Privacy
Throughout this case, I've tried my best to balance the amount of details I share to highlight this project's journey while avoiding sensitive data, features or sales figures from being disclosed. I still hope you found it informative and enjoyable!