“Ultimately, we want to save time and money for our customers, and make their lives easier in a sustainable way.”
- AlistairWestgarth , Starship Technologies CEO
Starship Technologies
Experience the future of food delivery, today.
reading time: 7 minutes
PROJECT SUMMARY
Team project of a hybrid redesign of the Starship Technologies mobile app. Research the growing popularity of autonomous robotic delivery and identify problems affecting users in the urban sprawl.
OVERVIEW
Starship technologies is a company developing small self-driving robotic delivery vehicles that provides consumers access to food from their favorite restaurants. Primarily operating on college campuses throughout the US, customers enjoy contactless ordering via the Starship Technologies app. After ordering, users identify the pick-up points. The robots rely on combination of sensors, cameras, and 3D mapping to complete the last mile delivery.
SCOPE
4 week sprint
ROLE
User Research, Interviews, Content Strategy, UX Sound Design
METHODS & TOOLS
PROBLEM SPACE
What are the main challenges for companies entering a new a market? Financially, a company will have to overcome capital costs, distribution, and regulatory barriers. How does UX design address new users and their unique pain points distinct from those addressed in the current solution?
Our team set out to discover the how the needs of a user differ based on location; college campus vs urban city-scape. What pain points exist for users in an untested market? We conducted user research and synthesized the data to uncover the needs, frustrations and overall goals of this new persona.
USER RESEARCH
Virtual Format
7 Participants
2 out of 7 had experience with robotic delivery services
7 out of 7 participants take advantage of last mile delivery services at least twice
Key Insights
Users were amenable to the idea of autonomous robots as solutions to existing problems
Privacy, security and the capacity for updates in tracking are paramount in any transaction carried out by delivery
The option to designate the pick-up point is important to the end user
COMPETITIVE & COMPARITIVE ANALYSIS
Our team decided that a C&C analysis would be an excellent way to consolidate and compare the two industries where Starship Robotics intersects; robotics and delivery of goods. We identified two companies at the forefront of autonomous robotics in their business model in Waymo, Lyft who we hoped could provide information on what features they were providing for their client base and what problems they were managing related to the user experience.
Amazon, Uber, and Macy’s were selected on the basis of their individual successes but also to see the different ways that each company was handling features like user safety and privacy, live gps-enabled tracking, and customer updates to tie into our user interview takeaways.
PROBLEM | HOW MIGHT WE STATEMENTS
As a team, we compiled and synthesized our research and data and had already begun shaping our Primary User Persona to address her unique pain points.
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT
Donna, the “Hungry Workaholic” has been working from home since the start of the Pandemic. She has become accustomed to some of the advantages of working from home, like casual Fridays — everyday, but also recognizes some of the disadvantages. For example, her workload has increased leaving her with little time during the week for self care, and the increase of professionals working from home has led to increases in waits and crowded lines at her favorite restaurants.
USER FLOW MAPPING | NARRATIVE ARC
We decided to map Donna’s happy user flow as a busy professional who is attempting to order a meal, delivered to her to ensure her workflow is not disrupted by the task of having to cook, or disrupt the completion of her workload. To aid with this task, I charted a narrative arc as a visual tool for my team members and a potential stakeholder with limited UX experience.
SITE MAP
My team member shared results from a 6 participant, closed , virtual card sort. We agreed to the closed format on the basis of evaluating how well an existing category structure supports the users’ ability to fit the content into the “expected” buckets.
DESIGN STUDIO
At this point the team was very eager to start sketching wireframes to test solutions and validate assumptions around the solutions we had come up with. At the suggestion of a team member, we thought it might be prudent to conduct a design studio to narrow the focus around potential UI design patterns we were collectively looking to incorporate in our redesign.
We conducted two separate design studios. The first round focused on the tasks and features relegated to the checkout process of the Starship Mobile app. We decided to conduct a second round to approach the user experience and tasks related to the ordering processes.
These design studios would serve as the genesis of our navigation design strategy. We would ideate around primary navigation through a static navigation bar. Contextual navigation would be used through the UI to provide the users easy travel through the various vendors pages, menus and sub menus.
We also converged around the idea of a QR code to unlock the robot’s lid upon arrival. We would work with the dev team around this possible solution to utilize the robot’s existing cameras to scan a unique code, generated for each order, to appease the users prioritization of safety and security. No bio-scan of the end user would be necessary in this case nor would the users have to share any sensitive information beyond what’s required for payment and delivery.
LO-FI WIREFRAMES
SOUND & UX
Usability testing of the digital wireframe resulted in 100% task completion ordering a prescribed menu item and navigating through the checkout phases. 66% of users were confused with the collection phase of the users journey.
I wondered if there was an opportunity to research a solution that would validate customers who were ordering for the first time and were reliant on the instructions provided, in the app UI, on how extract an order from the robot and complete the process.
I pitched the idea of an audible affirmation through the existing Starship Technology’s speakers as a potential solution to the team. With their blessing, I allocated time to conduct research surrounding UX and sound design.
I decided to conduct a survey of 9 participants to better understand trends and behaviors of users relating to Sound Design in UX.
SOUND DESIGN · KEY TAKEAWAYS
Users desire audio, but require the option to silence or modulate the volume of any audible notifications. Contributing factors include: social setting(work, public or private spaces), hardware and privacy(i.e. headphones vs bluetooth speakers)
Sound design can enhance a user experience for the purposes of communicating information to the users(i.e. a new message, input errors, non-active states)
Effective sound design should be baked into any product’s development rather than after.
DING!
Studies show that sounds in the mid-range frequencies around 50 mhz are perceived as generally pleasant to the human ear. I relied on an assets repository to begin the search of our notification sound before settling one one.
As a team, we agreed we would implement and test the sound during the unlocking phase after the robot had successfully arrived at the delivery destination.
MOOD BOARD
Collectively, the group began to plot elements on the mood board that would serve to inspire our high fidelity prototype. We grouped the references into two categories: features, visual design.
ATOMIC DESIGN SYSTEM
The early mock up of our atomic design system. Although modest in size, we agreed the bandwidth spent here could benefit a future iterations of our mobile app or the design of a responsive website.
CONTENT STRATEGY
Rethinking our brand and offer
For this aspect of our Content strategy, I set out to answer what our brand, tone of voice, point of view, and offer are.
Our target audience would consist of professionals, college students, with the horizon pointed toward expanding the offer to retail, service and hospitality sectors.
We would deliver our product’s content through a mix of strong graphic and photo-realistic images to educate and coach our users, and the utilization of descriptive microcopy to entice, and direct the user to their end products.
We would deliver through a brand voice that is both inviting and considerate.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
33% of users(1 of 3) experienced confusion identifying successful task completion
QR code needs more exposition (1 of 3 users)
Audio QR code was helpful by 100% of users
The navigation was “easy to understand”
67% of users(2 of 3) felt hungry as a result of the color palette
Conclusion
A team member had the opportunity to join a Starship Technologies live press conference, to announce the expansion to another US college campus. During a Q&A session, my colleague asked a rep from Starship about future business plans, the idea of expansion to different markets, multiple delivery. models, and a list of other features we encountered in our research phase.
The rep from Starship tactfully answered, “we’re not opposed to any new ideas, but currently it’s not within the scope of our 5 year plan”. I couldn’t help but wonder how important it is to align with the overall business goals, OKR’s, KPIS in parallel with any research derived solution offered by a designer. How would our solution aligned or mis-aligned with the dev team? What adjustments to scope and budget would need to be taken.
I reflect on this, like any of my projects, through the lens of a growth mindset, with the goal of honing my skillset and experience in an agile working environment with the goals and aspirations of my users as my compass.