Satalia Delivery
UX Case Study
Only a selection of screens is shown in this case study as it is under an NDA.
Overview and My Role.
Satalia Delivery optimises the routes and schedules of any vehicle fleet, taking into account the complexity of shift patterns, vehicle capacities, travel speeds, vehicle types, order weight, volumetrics or any other real-world constraints. I was part of a team helping to make the platform that drives these optimisations as easy and intuitive to use for our very specific users working within the logistics space.
I was the UX designer for this project from 2019 to 2021. I worked with a project navigator and a wider development team. I was in charge of the full UX scope since the beginning, responsible for all research practices, design and testing. (To comply with an NDA, some confidential information has been omitted)
Main Tasks
Heuristic reviews
Planning & Scope Definition
User Research
Wireframing, Prototyping and Design
User Testing
I first had to show my team of Satalia developers the benefits of user experience design, I did this through heuristic reviews of previous versions they had attempted without a designer and everyone was very pleased to learn methods of which to assess all designs and features. Our client base allow us direct access and constant feedback so I am in regular contact with our end users.
User Research
Before I started on this project, there were already clients using a version one attempted by Satalia developers. When I came in, I needed to overhaul this whole version as it was not at all easy to use, so I started by implementing Hotjar and Google Analytics to monitor what features to bring forward to a totally new and user friendly platform. I also sent out a survey to our clients in Australia (one of the biggest grocery stores in the country) to find out where it was failing them and to figure out what their main needs were.
I attended logistics expos and made sure to speak to as many people in this field as possible, aka our end users as well as having 1:1 interviews with numerous potential users including users from our existing user base. I carried out competitive analysis on others in this same space to see what we may have been missing and where we can excel above others. With all the qualitative and quantitive data gathered I created a collection of personas. These personas were then used in the creation of user stories which led to feature decisions.
Personas
Scheduling
Scheduling is the main calling card of Satalia Delivery so it was one of the most important things to get right. While our optimisation is world class, the users frontend view of the schedule needed a lot of work. The biggest UX challenge for this screen was presenting the sheer amount of information it needed to contain. The schedule needs to show long lists of vehicles, drivers and orders that should be easy for the user to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible. It also needed to have many different settings within it so the user can change things around. The most complicated design decision within this was how users can move different orders between trips, a method of selecting check boxes and then dropdowns was chosen.
How to display the map was another important choice as it is a valuable feature but finding the right balance of the map so it doesn’t take up too much space was a challenge. A schedule of a week of user testing and surveying was performed just for this screen as its importance could not be forgotten. This user testing proved most helpful as a pattern emerged of users not understanding a major feature of managing high risk trips and after further discussions with users, it was decided that the feature was not useful but rather confusing so it was removed.
Shifts
While not seeming in comparison to scheduling as an all important feature, getting shifts right was of the utmost importance. This is because driver shifts can completely change the way the optimisation gives users the most efficient schedule, the schedule relies upon how many drivers are available that day and what times they are working. The most complex design decision within this screen was how a shift pattern is actually defined and then how resources are assigned to a shift pattern. The setting up of a shift pattern required so much information that separating the assigning of resources into another form was vitally important.
Another complex problem was defining the logic behind a temporary shift and how to show to the users whether the shift they are creating is temporary or not. Within the calendar view showing the shifts for a specific day, week or month, a temporary shift is shown in yellow. If the user defines an end date when creating a shift pattern, that shift is then defined as temporary as it has an end date. If a non-temporary shift is edited and given an end date, it then becomes temporary until the end date passes where it then returns to the original settings. This way the user can define things such as holiday periods where shifts may need to change just for a few days or weeks.
Speed Profiles
While speed profiles is not a major screen within Satalia Delivery and is something usually only set up once by a user, its functionality is still very vital but was very hard to get right. The whole logic around how speed profiles work in a real world scenario is complicated enough to understand but then to have to bring it into a functionality within an online platform proved very challenging. It required me to speak directly again to some of our end users to understand how this feature would help them.
Trying to solve setting up a new speed profile through the use of dropdowns and form fields was not working so a more interactive visual based approach was attempted. This proved much more effective.
This visual based solution meant the form contained a horizontal timeline that represented 24 hours on a selected day and the user could then select a time period within this day. Once this was done, a slider appeared where a percentage could be chosen that represented the time ratio. Multiple time periods and therefore time ratios could be selected on each day.
Orders
Orders was a screen that was decided was needed after the formation of personas. To cater to our bigger clients such as grocery giants, for them to upload their thousands of orders, this is done through APIs. But when considering the persona of a small business owner where they may only have a few orders per delivery, a screen was needed where they could upload their orders either individually or in bulk. This means that the orders screen needs to be one of the easiest to use as its main users will likely have less professional logistics experience then our other users.
The screen shows a table of orders with all the required information as well as easy to use filtering in the side panel. This filtering solution is used throughout delivery and is currently a work in progress in the development pipeline. The orders screen is also where time slots can be decided by the user selecting their length and then assigning them to an order when it is created.
