UX design for logistics app

5 min readMay 31, 2021

Background

Logistics is one of the major challenges in a modern business environment. As the world gets digital, more and more things are done virtually, but the things that need to move, they need to be moved. SenditUp aims to digitize small & medium scale B2C and B2B logistics. It enables your business to send your package anywhere in the country with literally, just the click of a button. You only need to let us know how big the item is, and where it needs to go. An agent will pick it up, pack it right there and make sure it reaches the destination safely. In addition to this, SenditUp also has a B2B section for large scale logistics for bigger businesses.

Steps

Interview plan: Plan questions, recruit participants, conduct interview
Interview analysis: Take interview notes, organize the results, explore the opportunities, ideate basic features
Wire framing: Create a low fidelity digital prototype of the product
Prototyping: Create a polished, clickable prototype design of the wireframe
Usability study: Test the prototype, get feedback, make necessary changes in the design
Final design

Interview plan

Research Goal

The aim is to (What) to recreate a digital, easy to use logistics platform for (Whom) small and medium scale businesses (how) by simplifying B2B and B2C logistics by enabling businesses to send items easily (Why) because currently, even a simple logistic task for a business consumes a lot of time and resources.

Research Questions

How do small and medium businesses manage their logistics currently?
What does their experience look like at the moment?
How much technology is involved in the current process?
Is the business directly involved in the logistics?
Do they use a logistics partner?

Method & Recruiting

Method: 30 minutes in-person or remote 1:1 interviews with users. We will use the script as a guide and ask questions based on responses from the user to create a follow-up chain of questions.

Recruiting:

Small scale business owner
Employees involved in logistics

Interview analysis

Interview notes

The participants for the interview have been divided into two groups. User group 1 consists of business owners and other associated workers. User group 2 consists of employees associated with business logistics.

Major pain points

Time

Transportation to the drop point

Cost estimation

Payment

Working of the app

The user first gives the details about the size of the package, and gets a cost estimate. Then once the pickup is scheduled at a convenient time, the item is picked up and packed. this is a USP and can solve the problem of having to drop the package to the drop point, which is a major pain point. The agent provides the exact bill after this, and can be paid by a mode of the user’s choice.

SenditUp has 2 modes, Basic and Business. The business mode is aimed at bigger businesses with larger volumes. It offers discounted prices and additional features. This mode is more function-focused.

Feature ideation

Business mode features

Regular pickups: This allows the user to schedule regular pickups. Most of the bigger businesses handle a large volume of logistics and many of these are regular. The user can schedule a pickup at any desired interval (monthly, weekly, every 10 days etc.)
Payment tab: This allows the users in business mode to set up a tab, with which the payments can be done on a monthly basis. This is helpful because:

A) The user can avoid the hassle of having to deal with the payment for each pickup.

B) The user gets a credit period for the payment.

C) This helps make sure that the user uses SenditUp exclusively for most of the logistics needs.

Feature prioritization

The features are analyzed in terms of the value that each one provides with respect to the effort required. The features are prioritized in this manner.

Wireframes

Iteration 1

The basic wireframe is created based on the research and analysis, for an application and a website. The wireframe has 5 function screens for the basic mode, 4 function screens in business mode.

Prototyping and Usability study

The next step is to create a clickable prototype. This can be used for tests and the data collected from these are used to make changes.

Iteration 2

All the changes and learnings from iteration 1 are applied to create Iteration 2

Final design

Color scheme

For the final design, I have kept the interface simple and functional. The colors used are all based on green. According to color psychology, green stands for Nature, Healing, Freshness and Quality.