UX research | Interaction Design
Visual Design | Copywriting
BACKGROUND
Founded in 2017, Bondadosa is a social enterprise that harnesses the power of Colorado's community of producers, growers, and small businesses. They serve as the front line in the fight against food injustice by utilizing technology to build a better distribution network. They also support emerging startups focused on agriculture and sustainable transportation.
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Bondadosa has been working diligently with the tools they’ve had available to them since they started their company. Over time, they have realized the growth ceiling that comes from using these other tools and want a solution that will grow with them and their increasing staff of drivers.

PROBLEM

Bondadosa struggles with managing their growing driver team. Their drivers currently are over compensating themselves with poor reporting. There are multiple ways/places communication is taking place making it hard to track what has been said between staff and drivers. Drivers are cancelling routes at the last minute and routes are running late. All of these combined are costing them both capital and damaging relationships with their business partners.

DURATION
5 Weeks
TOOLS
Figma

GOALS

Mobile app for Bondadosa drivers to streamline their routing system; creating a more profitable and scalable business model.

Research

LETS LEARN MORE
STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
The stakeholder interviews provided insight into the current task flow of a driver and what features were important for me to implement into the app. Because the project could have taken many forms and cost of implementation was a key constraint, it was important for us to narrow the scope of the project down. Over several meetings we identified 4 main goals.
1. Pick up routes to put on a personalized schedule
Giving the drivers their schedule is a very manual process. The drivers are paid by the hour making it easy to take advantage of the system by going slower on their route. They would like to move to a pay by route model.
2. Streamline communication with staff
‍There are multiple channels of communication including slack, email, message and phone call depending on the issue at hand. They would like one place to host communication.
4. Track payments and invoices for individuals
‍Currently, they have PDF’s that are hard to access for the drivers. Many do not use these regularly. Showcasing this would also incentivize drivers to pick up more shifts.
3. Drive a route
Their current platform allows for this but is not integrated with scheduling or their route processes.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS‍
Competitive analysis was used to understand how companies present their driver apps. This was used to collect data on features and flow. Seeing the flow of how a driver on both picks up routes and drops off deliveries gave me insight to the flow and potential screens needed.

Design

LETS MAKE IT USABLE
‍TASK FLOW
I used a task flow to make sure my understanding of the flow of a driver was mapped appropriately. This shows the decisions made, actions taken and screens shown for picking up a shift and for driving a route.
SITE MAP
A sitemap was used to organize the data collected from the stakeholder interviews regarding app functionality. This helped me see the main screens I would be creating broken down by individual features needed to complete a task.
Click image to enlarge
NEW BONDADOSA APP DESIGN
Using the data above, I created low fidelity designs to map out what would need to be shown on each screen. One of the challenges in this phase was figuring out how the new scheduling piece would work with their current system.

Currently, they have specific times of the day the drivers can start routes. When a driver finishes their route early, they have gaps of time between routes. Oftentimes they will go home instead of waiting. When creating the scheduling piece of the project, we discovered the drivers would need to be able to pick up routes based on the length of time the route would take and all routes would likely need to be ready first thing in the morning. This would be a big change to their current ordering system.
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If we allowed for drivers to pick up three routes per day in advance and list additional routes that do not have assigned drivers on the homepage, this will incentivize people to pick up more routes because they can easily see that they are available.

The visual below shows the current vs future state and shows how the new design will save the company a significant amount of time.

Click image to enlarge
TIME SAVED 4+ HOURS
DRIVE A ROUTE

Currently, drivers use a combination of printed documents, OptimoRoute, google maps/waze, and personal email/messaging. This solution will bring a functioning map service into the application and allow for the details of the route to be shown in one place

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Drivers found it difficult to manage and access personal information. With this solution, they can change things like insurance and contact information. They can also their personal invoices and payments.

Test

DOES THIS THING WORK?
PROTOTYPE
A prototype was made to showcase the task flows of adding a route to their personal schedule, driving a regular route, driving a route with a failed delivery, and navigating to their personal payout page. I tested the app with experienced drivers from Bondadosa which helped me see how an app like this would truly improve their lives.
View Prototype
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- 100% of drivers are excited to pick up routes and schedule their days in advance.
- 100% of drivers would be more likely to refer this job to a friend with the addition of scheduling
- 100% of drivers struggle with the current system and feel confident this app would improve their workflow
- 100% of drivers liked being able to find their payouts and invoices in one place.
- 75% of drivers commented positively on tracking miles for tax purposes
- 50% of users asked about seeing the location/area of a route before picking the route.

Testing opened up the stakeholder’s eyes (and ears) to see how feedback directly from their drivers could not only improve the app but could improve their current driver processes. After testing, a few of the smaller missing interactions were updated within the app and a list of “Next Steps” were created to help them look forward into their design process.

Develop

BRING IT TO LIFE
DEVELOP‍
I discussed the implementation with their backend developer. Overall, the integration appeared to be straightforward. It would pull detailed information from the portals he created. The hardest piece to implement will be the map feature. I was able to share this information with the stakeholders to keep in mind as they look forward to development. 
UI KIT
A UI kit was created for implementation purposes.

Conclusion

SO WHAT?
RESULTS
Success would be measured by employee satisfaction and time saved within the workflow of drivers and staff. 
NEXT STEPS
Bondadosa will begin the discovery phase of implementation with developers. They anticipate working with both designers and developers to build and iterate on the designs.
CONCLUSION
Working with Bondadosa on their driver app helped me discover how much I enjoy working on detailed and complex problems. Although I was solving for very specific parts of their business model, the solution sessions revealed how deeply each of these tasks were intertwined with their current systems. I enjoyed understanding the business needs and integrating with their employee needs. I am hopeful that my designs will make a significant difference in getting food into the hands of families in need.
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