ACERTUS: Operational efficiency through UX design

User Researcher | Interaction Designer | UX/UI Designer | User testing

Background: ACERTUS is a vehicle logistics company, moving cars and more from point A to point B. When a vehicle is picked up, an Electronic Condition Report (ECR) is conducted, documenting mileage, gas levels, and damage. The ECR is conducted again upon delivery at the destination. We found that the task was burdensome and inefficient, taking about 15-20 minutes to complete each time. Some users weren’t conducting the ECR properly or were skipping it entirely, which is a liability concern.

Challenge: How can we use UX to improve a time-consuming and redundant, but necessary, task for our short-haul drivers?

Outcome: Developed a new application process that reduced ECR task time from about 15-20 minutes down to 8-12 minutes.

Process

Research & Discovery: Conducted competitive analysis and interviews to develop user persona.

Define, Ideate & Strategize: Conducted an app audit to evaluate the current architecture and identify areas for improvement.

Interaction Design: Created user flow to optimize the process and reduce redundancies.

User Testing: Conducted usability test to determine time savings and efficiency.

UI Design: Leveraged existing Design System that I created for ACERTUS.

To begin to improve the application and current process, we needed to understand more about the issues within the current process as well as learn more about the needs of our users.

Methodologies

Generative Research:

• Competitive analysis - To determine how this problem is being solved by other organizations.

• App audit - To evaluate the current process and determine areas for improvement.

Primary Research:

• Contextual inquiry - Evaluate site conditions, constraints, and concerns and how this environment affects our scenario.

• Observational interviews - To engage directly with users to learn more about their pain points, observe them use with the current process, and understand the short cuts they are taking to identify possible solutions.

competitive analysis: pave

We discovered an app called Pave, that offers a similar service for documenting vehicle condition to consumers.

Insights

• Easily scan VIN to determine vehicle Year, Make, and Model

• Outline of vehicle to guide user on taking the best photos

• Easy, user-friendly, and approachable

Our takeaways

• Our lots are typically in small towns between destinations with large amounts of land. This often means that our sites have poor access to 5G services and are too large to be able to access our wi-fi signals. This means that a VIN decoder won’t be accessible at most of our lots, which also means we can’t license this product.

• ACERTUS moves hundreds if not thousands of vehicle types, including commercial and mechanical vehicles, in addition to consumer vehicles. Is it scalable for us to design and outline every angle of every type of vehicle? For a company like Pave, whose sole focus is this SaaS platform, this is an excellent solution, but it probably doesn’t work well for us.

• While we loved this solution, it unfortunately didn’t work for our context.

Contextual inquiry

I visited a local lot to understand more about the context of our use-case. Where is the condition report being conducted? What limitations are our users working under?

Persona

Based on the insights uncovered by interviews, I created a User Persona. The Persona helps keep the primary user as the focus of the design.

Pain points with current app

• Confusing jargon or unclear questions

• Lots of clicking to get through the process

• Need to get in and out of the vehicle too many times

• Too many pictures to take that don’t seem relevant

• Forced to answer irrelevant or unnecessary questions (ie - “Is backup camera working” for vehicles with no backup camera)

• Easier to just use my personal phone or a piece of paper

Defining the Design Problem

Our Operations team came to us with a need for rapid turnaround and a solution that would increase compliance and reduce time spent on the process. Thankfully, we aren’t creating something out of nothing. I had already developed a Design System for our organization that we could use for rapid ideation. We also already had an app for our lot teams that we would be able to add this process to.

Rapid design for efficient results

How do you create an MVP with only 4 weeks to do it in?

User Flow

Now that the information architecture and needs of the feature have been determined, we wanted to be sure to optimize the flow of the process and reduce clicks and the number of times the user needed to get in and out of the vehicle. We opted on a flow that began outside the vehicle to check under the hood first, then turn on the vehicle, answer questions related to the condition of the vehicle interior, then move to the exterior of the vehicle and answer those questions.

Hi-fidelity Wireframes

Planning out the design of the new process, I used our existing Design System to quickly design layouts that matched our brand and the application styling. We opted for very clear radio buttons and checkboxes over dropdowns for ease and visibility. Certain questions don’t appear unless they are needed. For example, if the user answers “No” to “Are any service lights on?”, they won’t see the questions about service lights. Additionally, to keep the photo-taking flexible, we opted for a select damage type first and then take photo (or select from phone’s photo gallery) flow. This allows the users to only take the photos that are relevant and to move through or around the vehicle in the manner that makes the most sense to them. We also revised how the questions were asked with a UX writing focus to ensure clarity and ease.

Vehicle Exercise app - Interior flow

Vehicle Exercise app - Exterior flow

Usability Testing

Testing Goals: 

• Assess the usability and functionality of the feature.

• Test the flow of the feature within the app’s architecture and design, and determine if users can easily and efficiently understand the feature and accomplish tasks.

• Observe users’ behaviors and note any areas of hesitation, disorientation, frustration, etc.

Testing Results:

• Completion Rate: 100%

• Error-Free Rate: 80%

Insights and Suggestions

Due to time constraints, we had limited testing capacity, but we were able to validate the approach we took to the flow. Though, improvements could be made to the image taking capability, which caused some confusion. Users felt the questions were more clear, the order of the questions made sense, and were happy at both the reduced amount of time the process took as well as the reduced number of clicks needed.

Project Takeaways

Our updated application was able to reduce the amount of time spent from about 15-20 minutes down to 8-12 minutes.

What Comes Next for the Vehicle exercise feature?

• Add additional features and continue to flesh out the Hub app

  • Add Skip feature (and ability to revisit skipped items)

  • Add image examples for reference

• Flesh out the app for a full condition report

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