FANTUAN DELIVERY
graphic & interface design
ROLE
Research, Interface Design, Photography, Video
TOOLS
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Pro
TEAM
Wan-Teen Yang, Linan Zhang
Fantuan Delivery is a local food delivery company. Using various research methods like interviews, cultural probes, personas and participatory workshops, we created a cohesive cross-platform application that connects Fantuan's customers, delivery drivers, partner restaurants and customer service together to streamline their communication and improve their routine.
PROBLEM
The main problem area we aimed to solve was the inefficient communication methods between the different groups involved in the delivery process.
INITIAL RESEARCH
We began by interviewing various department heads and individuals in the company and then got a closer look at the delivery drivers through an ethnographic study. From there, our design focus was to find a way to improve the current delivery process by alleviating issues that may be encountered while on a delivery.
To better understand our new focus, we created personas based on our data. I created personas for Andrew, a full-time Fantuan delivery driver and Johnathan and a part-time Fantuan delivery driver. We also created and deployed cultural probes to learn about frustrations and work habits of the two types of delivery drivers. From there, our design focus shifted into helping inexperienced delivery drivers improve their efficiency of managing time and delivering orders.
CHALLENGES
In the early stages of concept development, we were required to come up with three concepts to present. We had one strong concept, a cohesive, cross-platform application for communication that we all felt could solve Fantuan's main issue of cross-communication difficulties and two other concepts that were viable, but only attempted to tackle that issue from the delivery driver's side. To fix this problem, we looked at key features of the weaker concepts as well as what part of the issue they were attempting to solve to see if they could be altered or enhanced in a way that would fit and benefit our stronger concept.
INTERFACE DESIGN
There are four different interfaces Cohesion: customers (smartphones), delivery drivers (smartphones), partner restaurants (iPads) and the customer service department (desktop computers). I was in charge of designing the customer's side of the app on smartphones as well as the partner restaurant's side on iPads.
Since there was already an existing app for the customers, I focused on simplifying the overall appearance of the interface. This included icon design for quick categories, as well as presenting only essential information on the main delivery screens.
The smartphone interface for Fantuan's customers.
For the partner restaurants I designed the interface to have an overall, at-a-glance view as well as a detailed view because we found that most restaurants would be working on multiple orders at once and this would decrease the number of steps it would take to go from one order to another. To improve communication between all parties, the timeline let restaurants view and update an order's status. Additionally, if a problem arose from the involved parties, they would be alerted to it instantly through the status colours for each order.
The iPad interface for Fantuan's partner restaurants.
FINAL CONCEPT
In the end, our finalized concept was called Cohesion, a single, cross-platform application that connects all of the involved parties during a Fantuan delivery process. In addition to research, concept development and interface design, I was also responsible for creating a walkthrough video of the app. This project taught me a lot about useful research methods to use in order to learn about a specific user group and their dynamics. It also pushed me to develop creative solutions to alleviate issues.
A walkthrough of the final product.