brief

About Pedals

Pedals is a London-based package delivery service, that helps start-ups deliver goods to their customers and grow their businesses. Pedals focuses on eco-friendly means— bicycles— for delivering packages that range from peanut butter and clothes to rum and green tea drinks. Through their website, customers can book one off and multi-deliveries.

 

Problem & Opportunity

Pedals asked our team to come up with a new website design that would: 

  • help customers better understand what Pedals offers in terms of services and
  • create a more intuitive process for customers to use their booking services to help reduce customer service inquiries.
“I was honestly blown away by the results and all the research that went in [to the new design]. I really didn’t know what to hope for out of this process but it’s safe to say that you exceeded all of my expectations. So much so that we are implementing the design as we speak!... We are so glad that we took the time to go through this process.”
— Richa Bhalla, Founder of Pedals Delivery

My Role as team leader

I was the Team Leader in a team of three, and was in charge of leading the design process and managing the client relationship. I contributed to all aspects of the discovery, definition, design and delivery process, including: one-on-one interviews; persona creation; competitive research and analysis; idea generation and concept mapping; interface design; user testing; and presenting the work to stakeholders. The tools we used were paper and pen, Sketch, Marvel and Keynote. 

analyzing pedals and its ECOSYSTEM

We first reviewed Pedals website in-depth, analyzing it's strengths and weaknesses, and looked at it alongside key competitors, including Stuart, Gophr and Shutl. Then we mapped the game walkthrough site landscape to understand where Pedals currently was in it.  

USER RESEARCH to understand usage of pedals & delivery services

  • I interviewed Pedals customers asking probing questions to better understand the ups and downs each user experiences with delivery services. 
  • We visited co-working hubs, including Google Campus and IDEA London, for a contextual enquiry and talked to other start-ups not using Pedals but who use various other types of delivery services.

To learn more about the needs and experience of package delivery users, we sent a screener survey to find potential people to interview. We also approached a selection of Pedals' customers and potential customers, to interview them about their experience with Pedals and usage of delivery services. 

Daniel Fozzati of BathPOP, a start-up in IDEA London that sells locally made bath products.

Daniel Fozzati of BathPOP, a start-up in IDEA London that sells locally made bath products.

Key Findings

With our research I developed an affinity map, synthesizing our findings about Pedals customers:

  • Usually something goes wrong online and they have to call Pedals staff to sort it out.
  • They are often confused by what their delivery options are—in terms of how long deliveries take.
  • They don't have a way to specify package details in much depth in the order form—causing confusion on both on the customer and business side.
  • But they very much like that Pedals fits with their eco-friendly brand.
 

Affinity map for interviews with Pedals customers

we developed two Personas—INcluding "olivia"

We then developed two initial personas — one for "Olivia," an eco-conscious peanut butter entrepreneur and one for "Robert," an office manager at a smoothie company. We settled on Olivia as our primary persona as she values eco-friendliness a little more than Robert, and by optimizing for her we were optimizing the user experience for all Pedals customers and their needs—eco, reliability and speed.

olivia's Journey to book a delivery & her Painpoints

To help us understand the journey that Olivia takes and the goals she has in using Pedals delivery services, we conducted a fun session with Richa and Jessie from Pedals in which we sketched out story boards of Pedals customers making a booking for a delivery and what sparks that delivery process.

And from that process we came up with two typical scenarios for Olivia’s particular customer journey through Pedals’ site. She:

  • Wants to learn more about Pedals and how its service works
  • Wants to book a delivery quickly and accurately—eg. sending 1kg of peanut butter to a blogger by end of day 

Meeting with Jessie and Richa from Pedals Delivery 

my User flow for making a one-off delivery

my storyboard sketch of olivia's journey to book a delivery

One panel in my experience analysis of Olivia's journey to book a package delivery, noting her highs and lows 

IDEA GENERATION & INTERFACE EXPLORATION to solve olivia's problems

We then developed concept maps and sketched ideas for various possibilities to address Olivia’s goals above, focusing on designing a:

  • Clearer navigation structure
  • Step-by-step and intuitive booking process
  • A new on-boarding process that drew on Pedals' strengths of eco-friendliness and specialization in delivery of local packaged goods 

This led to our first paper prototype of the one-off delivery process, captured in brief below, which we also shared with Pedals to keep them abreast of our progress.

Sketching ideas with the team

my Concept map for elements that define Pedals brand positioning

my Concept map for elements that define Pedals brand positioning

my Sketch summary of one-off delivery process

TESTING & VISUAL ITERATIONS of our prototype

Prototypes & Wireframes

We tested our prototype with eight people, asking users to pursue a goal, as Olivia, of requesting a package of a certain weight and size to be picked up and delivered by a specific time of day. We then incorporated feedback into wireframes we created in Sketch and further tested them, iterating the designs until we had high-fidelity versions. 

Key changes based on testing feedback:

  • Changed the order of screens in the booking process, so that Package Details came before Login (and with the Delivery Options screen) 
  • Created a progress bar using a bicycle icon to show the user that they are moving through different steps
  • Added weight ranges (e.g. 100 to 200 kg) to the Package Details page
“When I create an account on the Login screen, and then see the Package Details screen afterwards, I feel disappointed to have given you my contact details and then to find out that my package is too big to be delivered. Would rather see Package Details sooner in the process.”
— Kirsty

Current "item description" box where customer can indicate package details

New proposal for pack details page

Higher fidelity iteration of package description

 

Current delivery options page -- have to select from drop down one by one to see the cost option change.

New proposal for delivery options page with options and costs more visible.

Higher fidelity iteration of delivery options

proposed solution

Presentation

We presented our prototype to Pedals staff who were very pleased with the progress we made in a two and half week sprint, noting:

"I was honestly blown away by the results and all the research that went in. I really didn't know what to hope for out of this process but it's safe to say that you exceeded all of my expectations. So much so that we are implementing the design as we speak!... We are so glad that we took the time to go through this process."—Richa Bhalla, Founder of Pedals Delivery

 

Next Steps

For next steps, we proposed in our presentation that Pedals further explore:

  • Developing the user profile section of the site, to enable customers to track their orders and save a record of them for repetition
  • Further test the progress bar feature for the stepped booking process