CHAMA THE APP
Chama is a technology company that provide online cooking gas ordering and delivery platform based in Amsterdam and Sao Paulo. Each month Brazilians run out of their cooking gas, and go through a repetitive slow and problematic re-ordering process. The mission isn’t only to solve this issue by providing Brazilian consumers with a faster, easier and safer way to get the gas but also to help resellers to sell more product in a more efficient way.
My Role
I worked in close collaboration with a lead designer, researchers and a development team located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. We use the Agile methodologies for the product development process. While the whole product, BI and management team work in the Netherlands the other half of the company which compose of researchers, customer service and marketing locates in Sao Paulo, Brazil to be closer to the market. Although there were several issues that occur due to the international collaboration but working across these different countries provides us all with a more open perspective.
In this case study I would like to go from the first launch of products to the market. Then the second phase which we developed from researches, key learnings and insights after the first period. Then I would show the outcome of the project at the end of the case study.
UI design ( User interface for Web and Mobile )
UX design ( Research, improve and provide better experience )
User research ( Field observation, interviews )
Prototype ( Flow and interactions for user testing and development )
Testing ( Before implementation )
Competitive research
Tools
Figma
Sketch
Principle/ Framer
Zeplin
Triple Track Agile
User Research
Problem and Context
As mentioned in the beginning, the process of buying and selling cooking gas in Brazil can be quite painful for consumers. Meanwhile, the reseller market is very competitive. Moreover, tools that are available in market don’t fulfil all reseller needs ,therefore, they need to purchase and switch between tools during the working hour which is complicated and frustrating for them. In term of logistics, there is no tool to support this so drivers need to deliver lot of orders each day through calls or Whatsapp messenger which are hard for them to manage and work efficiently.
Chama provided 3 products for a consumer, a reseller and a driver. The mission is to revolt the system of gas ordering process. My team has a focus on the B2B market and logistic side which compose of two main products . First one is Partner portal which made for resellers to sell their products and control everything including orders, tracking, store detail, driver management and everything. Another one is Driver App for drivers to deliver gas to customers in the fastest and smartest way possible.
Project Goals
Improve the whole logistic quality by making it better, faster and easier
Provide the best user experience with both products
Growth of the customer base ( resellers and drivers )
Increase number of orders
Improve order success rate
Design Process
I worked within the Triple Track Agile Process which composes of two main parts; problem and solution scope. In the solution scope , it will start with the discovery phase then follow by the delivery phase. My work will start from the discovery phase which is after receiving the opportunity list from the researcher and data scientist from the first phase.
In the discovery phase we worked together with product owner, strategists, researchers and head of product. The purpose of the Discovery phase is to find the best solution for user and business needs and minimise risks before proceeding to the delivery phase which is to move the solution to the production stage.
Getting to know our users
DEALER PERSONA
Driver persona
old Customer journey map
Early Discovery
Customer insight
From the researches that have been mentioned above with more data from market research and planning, these are the key insights that defined the launch the latest version of the product:
THE FIRST LAUNCHED
PARTNER PORTAL & DRIVER APP
Chama first introduced Partner Portal and Driver app to a reseller with all necessary features that require in the gas ordering process from the first to the final step. Together with a consumer application, Partner Portal gives resellers a fair market to sell their product and increase their awareness to consumers. A consumer can order gas in few clicks in the app and it will be sent to Partner Portal immediately. Then the reseller can assign this to his driver and he could start delivery right away with a navigation tool in the Driver App.
SECOND PHASE DISCOVERY
After the products were launched, we kept a close eye and looked for opportunities to make them better. Then we went back to the problem scope, starting from researching phase to get key learnings and insights from our users before proceeding to the discovery phase. We did some field observations and interviews to understand our users behaviour and struggles that they face in their daily lives.
Deep insights
Goal/ OPPORTUNITIES
Not just Chama order
Resellers can only manage Chama orders within Partner Portal. However, they also rely heavily on outside orders. This stops the Portal from being a one-stop-shop tool for them.
.
Full visibility of drivers
and delivery process
Tracking page only provides a map with driver pins. It’s not clear about the driver status and also his ongoing orders. Resellers also can’t see drivers if they aren’t registered in PP and don’t use Driver app.
.
Better store management
To manage each store or service area, resellers need to go to the left navigation to select the one that they want then go to the product and coverage page to change the details. The process is unnecessarily long and very time consuming.
.
Making a report easier
A report is a key part of the business. Resellers do this either daily, weekly or monthly. They need to scroll through the small concluded order column to collect the data which is incredibly time consuming.
.
Order success rate could be higher
Users don’t fully understand the tools and features. Also, most drivers aren’t tech savvy. This obstructs the order process to be completed and their work efficiency to be maximised to the fullest capacity.
New Partner Portal & Driver app
Design System
Before coming up with the design system, we used to have a library for each products which was hard to remain the consistency between them. Moreover, the old libraries had some legibility issues due to the low recognition of text which influence by the type size and contrast.
This system key idea is small and independent parts which can be combined into larger molecular structures. Together it defined our patterns including typography, colours, icons, spacing, navigation and information architecture among three application. This helps to guide designers to maintain with the brand alignment and makes it easier for developers to keep the same pattern in the implementation process.
Introducing phone orders
Resellers now can add orders that they receives from outside of Chama in the tool. It can be tracked and managed just like one inside. This will make Partner Portal the true one-stop-shop tool for resellers.
Full visibility of driver and delivery process
In order to have the full visibility of all drivers and delivery process it’s crucial to not only improving the Tracking page feature but to have all drivers on both platforms; Partner Portal and Driver app. These are ways that we used to accomplish the goal:
Making driver creation a lot easier
Instead of filling lot of fields that looks extremely confusing, we simplify the process by asking them to only provide necessary information and get rid of all redundant part out to make it easier and faster.
Brand new tracking page
Provide a right panel as a default state of the page. A user doesn’t need to search for a driver on a map but can choose one on the panel. This provides all necessary information that a dealer needs to know about driver. It’s more visible and easier for them. Moreover, a dealer now can manage his driver from here such as changing the price for MD and status just in case that they forgot to go offline for the app.
Order history page
As we know, most of our resellers have been suffered with the way to generate report from the old Partner Portal. We release the new feature an order history page that could either be accessed from the order page or separately from the menu. The page provide a filter, search tools and date picker to make searching experience become pleasant and time saving. Moreover, it can generate an Excel file that’s commonly used everywhere for report files.
Multiple ways to manage stores
Store and service area management is the feature that a reseller needs to go to not less than 10 times per day everyday to manage the product and opening hours. We now move all the service areas to be in one page together with product, price and opening hours. So they can manage everything faster and easier while having a store selector always visible on the top navigation bar.
Increase the success rate
Communication is the key
We use a popup dialog to inform resellers every time we launch new features when they log into the Portal. Moreover, with the use of Intercom articles, they can learn more about how to use these new features at any time.
Educate our users
Ease of learning is one of the most important things for users. We know that most drivers aren’t tech savvy and often have probs with smart devices. Therefore, we provide Training materials that explain everything that they need to know in order to use our app and ones for resellers as well. This material can be accessed at any time from both tools.
Guide when the problems occur
Most of the time when issues occur, drivers don’t know what to do and this interrupts the whole delivery process. We provide the Troubleshoot feature with a step by step guide to help them solve the issue in the easiest and fastest way possible.
The Impact
Positive results and STILL ON GOING
The new design of Partner Portal and Driver app had a positive impact on the whole logistic process, success rate and order volume. However, there are still many voids and opportunity to bring this to another level. I believe this to be an evolutional change that will change the behaviour of the market over a longer period of time.
Over a year we have changed these:
Average delivery time decreased by 41%
Success rate increased up TO 90-100%
ORDER VOLUME INCREASE by 72%
a number of user (reseller) increased by 93%
a number of user (Driver) increased by 560%
For confidentiality reasons I have omitted the actual values for these metrics.